A Sydney mother who saved for a year to take her two children to Perth was left sitting drenched and bag-less after her plane landed with no luggage on board.
Louisa Roberto was on board Qantas flight 565 on Monday morning and says she and her two children, who both have special needs, had been waiting at the baggage carousel for half an hour before an announcement was made.
‘Not one bag came off that belt, not one,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.
For most, a missing bag is an inconvenience. For Ms Roberto, whose luggage contained her son’s medication, it was a nightmare.
Louisa Roberto, a single mother of two, was left without her son’s medication after their flight from Sydney landed in Perth without a single passenger’s suitcase on board
Her 10-year-old son Ollie has Autism and ADHD. The family landed at 8.15am, and Iggy was due for his next dose of medication at lunch time.
When her bags did not arrive, panic began to set in for the mother-of-two.
The trio waited around for as long as possible, but as her son became more and more restless, Ms Roberto knew she had to get him to the hotel.
‘They said we could wait for next flight [which would have our bags on it], but with a child like mine, I can’t wait around,’ she said.
Ms Roberto and her sons (from left: Iggy, eight, and Ollie, 10,) were not informed their baggage was missing until they had waited at the baggage carousel for about half an hour
The family sat drenched from the rain, without their bags for as long as they could after being promised their belongings – and Ollie’s medication – were on the next flight over
When she told airline staff her dilemma, she said they were abrupt and told her she should not have packed it in check-in luggage.
‘In a sense, they’re correct and I should have packed it on with me, but I thought stupidly and wrongly my bags would arrive,’ she said.
‘Not one person got anything off the [baggage] carousel,’ she said.
Ms Roberto’s bags did eventually arrive – late on Monday afternoon.
Had they not, the holiday she had spent a year saving for would have been canned.
‘The medication [that Iggy is on], you can’t get from a GP – you need a specialist and you need an authorisation code from the government to receive it,’ she said.
The bags arrived late on Monday afternoon, but had they not, the young family would have needed to fly home, ruining the holiday Ms Roberta saved for a year to afford
An issue with cargo hold of QF565 from Sydney to Perth and also from QF772 from Perth to Melbourne meant no luggage could be loaded on to the flights.
In both instances, the airline loaded stranded baggage on to the next available flight, and customers in destinations other than their home state were compensated if their luggage was not returned within 24 hours.
A spokeswoman for Qantas told Daily Mail Australia: ‘We appreciate the frustration caused by flight delays and the inconvenience caused when customers’ bags don’t arrive when they should.
‘We sincerely apologise to our customers who were impacted by our baggage delays yesterday.’
Journalist Peter van Onselen, who was also on the plane, was left outraged when his bag also did not appear on the conveyor belt, which Ms Roberto claims didn’t even turn on
Journalist Peter Van Onselen was also on the flight, and had taken to Twitter to report no bags had been on the plane.
On Monday, a fault in the baggage belt at Sydney Airport also affected passengers luggage, with about 100 bags across a number of flights headed around the country left behind in Sydney.
Ms Roberto also slammed the airline for their poor handling of the situation.
‘At the airport, I didn’t get as much as one apology. It was just “oh well”,’ she said.
‘They should be offering something in compensation. I would have been happy with a coffee.
‘I’m still waiting for even an apology.’
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Qantas for further comment.
The passengers of QF565 reportedly all arrived at Perth Domestic Airport on Monday morning without their bags (stock image)