Aegean / Safety and Baggage
 

Filing a formal complaint with DOT. I know Aegean doesn't fly to the US, but hopefully they'll keep it if they ever apply.

Flew from Athens to Santorini in September 2011.
We arrived about 50minutes late to Santorini at around 11pm. Went to baggage claim and about 1/3 of the passengers received their bags.

The rest of us (50 people) waited for the rest of the bags. 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes... Finally, the security guard told us that they were not bringing any more bags.

Went over to the guest service area, and was finally told that... "Because they wanted to get back on schedule, they didn't unload all the bags, and our bags went back to Athens with the plane".

Another passenger told us that a baggage handler told her that "They only needed 5 more minutes but their manager told them to stop as the plane needed to leave"

...
It's one thing to lose baggage, another to *intentionally* route them elsewhere, after they arrived.
Second, and why I'm filing with DOT... Management clearly valued on-time, more than a culture of completing what needs to be done. What else was sacrificed? The baggage issue is a symptom of a larger problem.

Absolutely horrendous that this happened. Almost inexcusable. I do have a scenario though....let's say the crew was about to run out of time or there was weather moving into an area where the flight needed to be or there was a curfew for takeoff or landing which is very common. In that case, a whole return planeload of people would have been inconvenienced. The manager took the lesser of the two evils, if this was the case.

If there were no extenuating circumstances, the decision was reprehensible. If there were, it was a great call.

Lesser of two evils is certainly possible, with pilots timing out.

(Customer service was horrible too. How cowardly for them not to come in and tell people what happened. Just left everyone standing there for 30 minutes 'waiting' for the rest of the bags).

If you have an organization where management is advising field employees to skip key functions, it's likely you have a culture that would allow other aspects other than baggage to be skipped.

I suspect that the Judge is right about this. If it was a matter of a few minutes, I am mystified why they would do this without a compelling reason. I suspect the crew were running out of hours and either left or were stranded by EU flight hours.

Also mystified why you would complain to DOT. It will gather dust. You can complain to the Hellenic Aviation Authority in English. The link, with English EU complaint form is here:

http://www.hcaa.gr/content/index.asp?tid=563

Much more likely to get something done about it here....