EU foreign minister's bags among the 28,000 held in storage after T5 fiasco

It had been thought that 15,000 suitcases were stuck in storage, following problems with the baggage handling system.

But yesterday, Jim Fitzpatrick, the Aviation Minister, revealed that there was a backlog of 28,000, which would take a week to return to their owners.

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Terminal 5 opened last Thursday and has been blighted by glitches ever since. Yesterday 54 British Airways flights were cancelled.

Another 50 have been cancelled for today and further cancellations are expected - affecting families heading off for a holiday when many schools break up on Friday.

At the current rate, more than 500 flights will have been cancelled by the end of the weekend, delaying more than 100,000 passengers.

Mr Fitzpatrick told MPs that passengers using the £4.3billion terminal had suffered "an unacceptably poor experience".

The baggage system had become "clogged" and had stopped functioning on several occasions.

"Delivery so far has fallen well short of expectation," he said.

"The travelling public is not interested in who is to blame...but rather in being properly treated when things go wrong."

An insider said the situation is unlikely to improve before the end of the week.

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"We're heading into one of the biggest holiday periods of the year when the schools break up.

Never mind 15,000 missing bags - you can multiply that by ten.

"BA will do what they always do. They will send bags away. Last time there were major problems they were shipping bags by FedEx to a warehouse in France.

"It's going to be one of the worst weekends of the year. If they don't get it sorted out by the weekend it really will be meltdown."

Previously, BA has auctioned off bags that it was unable to re-unite with their owners after a few months.

Yesterday, passengers using the terminal were hit by a fresh glitch when the driverless, remote-controlled electronic trains connecting the main and satellite terminals broke down.

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Passengers arriving from Miami were stuck underground for 15 minutes while they waited for engineers.

Further problems could arise from the threat of strike action by BA pilots over the terms and conditions for those working for its Open Skies operation.

It seems that no traveller has been immune from the chaos. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, told the airport operator BAA.

"He arrived merely to transit but his bags are nowhere to be seen and it was whispered that it might take weeks.

"He asked me to pass on a message to BA/BAA, 'For goodness' sake, get your act together'."

It was rumoured last night that the politician in question was Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister.

Tory transport spokesman Theresa Villiers described the debacle as "a national embarrassment".

She accused Ruth Kelly, the Transport Secretary, of being "happy to sip champagne at the opening ceremony and then run for cover" when things went wrong.

BA said the terminal will continue to operate at 87 per cent capacity. Chief executive Willie Walsh, who has ignored calls for his resignation, said the airline was holding only 19,000 bags in temporary storage and hoped to start returning 5,000 of them today.

"But this is a labour-intensive process because we're not using the Terminal 5 baggage system. We're doing this manually and, clearly, it will take time."