Boris Johnson brands Gatwick bosses 'chimpanzees' after his holiday bags go missing

Boris Johnson launched a damning attack on Gatwick Airport 'hell' after his bags went missing following a family holiday.

As millions of Britons embark on their own summer holiday breaks, the outspoken Mayor of London spoke for the intense frustration endured by many when he condemned the 'wretched' and chaotic conditions.

He also attacked the ‘chimpanzee-like’ control of airport bosses, the shortage of passport control staff, and the 'snivelling and insincere' apology he received for his pains.

The outburst marks another nail in  the coffin for Spanish-owned airport operator BAA - whose management he condemned as 'cowardly'.

It faces being stripped of its monopoly 'stranglehold' over seven UK airports, including Heathrow, by competition watchdogs.  That could mean BAA being forced to sell Gatwick.

The Mayor criticised staff shortages in the Gatwick arrival hall, claiming airport authorities had a ‘chimpanzee-like’ control over luggage handlers and service that would shame many Third World countries.

He said if nothing were done to deal with the problems, Britain would suffer come the 2012 Olympic Games:'Gatwick is the eighth most busy airport in the world, and the sheer volume of passengers coming to London airports is a testimony to the attractions of the city and the dynamism of the British economy.

'But in four years, we are due to welcome the world to the London Olympics, and we need to sort this chaos out now.’

Mr Johnson said his nightmare started when he got through passport control with wife Marina and their four children as they returned from a week-long holiday in Italy.

He said: ‘It did occur to us to wonder why there were so few passport controllers, and so many hundreds of exhausted travellers shuffling round the ox-pens, like inmates of some Victorian penitentiary. By this time, I knew we stood in hell.’

He said the baggage hall was full of people — some who had been waiting more than two and a half hours.

'Some sat and stared at the barren carousels; some tried to cheer themselves up by pretending to be their own missing luggage, sitting on the conveyor belts and taking pictures of each other with their mobile phones,’ he said.

Miserable homecoming: Waiting travellers in Gatwick's baggage hall

‘It is a measure of the extreme cowardliness and cynicism of the airport authorities that there was no one from BAA in that baggage hall.

'There was no one from Servisair, the baggage handlers whose entirely foreseeable ‘staff shortages’ had caused the problem.’

With no staff in sight, passengers were left to rely on information from telescreens and  loudspeaker announcements re more reminiscent of the North Korean communist dictatorship, he said.

Mr Johnson spoke to the only representative available — a man in the lost luggage department — who said he knew nothing.

‘All he knew was that our bags were out there in the dark on the rain-lashed tarmac,’ he added.

The man gave passengers a photocopied letter from Mark Poynton, the Service Delivery Controller for Servisair, apologising for any delays.

But Mr Johnson described it as ‘one of the most snivelling and insincere letters I have ever read’.

He noted: 'We offered to mount an Entebbe-style raid to liberate our luggage, and were told we couldn't do that for health and safety reasons.'

He said Gatwick authorities needed better systems to ensure passengers did not suffer delays. ‘To call this service Third World is an insult to the many gleaming and efficient airports of developing nations,’ he said.

‘In their contemptuous indifference, the airport authorities remind me of the 1970s, and the trade unions of my childhood.’

With pressure on Heathrow and opposition to a third runway, he backed the building an 'eco-friendly' London airport in the Thames estuary.

BAA was - along with British Airways - in the dock over the chaotic opening of Heathrow's prestigious £4.3billion Terminal 5 in March this year.

It was dubbed 'a national humiliation' with more than a week of chaos, cancellations and up to 28,000 lost bags.

The Competition Commission is expected to rule in provisional findings next week that BAA stranglehold over seven major UK airports -  Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Southampton,  Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen -  should be ended and BAA broken up.

It has already published 'emerging thinking' that it 'may not be serving well the interests of either airlines or passengers'.

BAA serves 150 million passengers but has been accused of putting shops before service.

It faces being forced to sell off one of its three London Airports - most likely Gatwick.