Boris slams Gatwick over lost bags

The Mayor of London criticised staff shortages in the arrival hall, claiming airport authorities had a "chimpanzee-like" control over luggage handlers and that the service was worse than that of many Third World countries.

He also pointed out that if nothing was done to deal with the problems, London would suffer come the 2012 Olympic Games.

He said: "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. The family-had just returned from a week-long holiday.

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 oxpens, 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. "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."

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 rainlashed 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 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."

Servisair was today unavailable for comment.