This comes after a glitch that occured last week Friday saw several domestic passengers’ bags being left behind when some aircraft departed from the airport without all baggage on board.

Several flights were also delayed to allow for baggage to be loaded.

In a statement, Terence Delomoney, Group Executive Operations Management at ACSA, said the technical issue that affected the baggage sorter was not the result of wear and tear or a lack of maintenance, but rather due to an incident that led to the physical breakage of an electro-mechanical sensor.

"The problem has been resolved and the entire process continues to be vigorously examined. We are now working hard to ensure that the remaining backlog of short-shipped bags is cleared as soon as possible."

Out of a total of 77 569 bags processed at OR Tambo International Airport on Thursday and Friday, 31 118 were domestic and regional, and of these, about 4 500 were short-shipped. This translates into 19% of domestic and 13% of regional bags being short-shipped over the two days.

"We now have less than 80 bags in the network – from the original approximately 4 500 – that need reunification with their owners, many of whom have indicated that they will fetch them at the destination airports," says Delomoney.

He adds that ACSA apologises for the significant disruption to customers over this Christmas period and also wants to assure the public that it has taken all possible steps to work with airlines and other stakeholders to resolve the issue.

"Due to the problem, most domestic airlines decided to delay flights and wait for passengers’ bags to be loaded. This was due to most flights being full and no space being available on later flights to transport short-shipped bags to their owners.

"The major concern from airlines flying to regional destinations was that most passengers travelling to Mauritius, Victoria Falls, and Mpumalanga were travelling for the holidays, so it was important that all bags made it onto their flights."

ACSA mobilised most of its manpower to assist with carrying bags to other check-in counters and emergency lifts to ease congestion.

This as some ACSA staff were posted at the Central Terminal Building (CTB) check-in to assist with the dispatching of bags from CTB islands.

"ACSA had ensured the full deployment of senior management and executives on the floor and in operations control to manage the situation caused by the system failure. We arranged additional baggage, technical and handling staff (porters) to be deployed to the check-in areas and baggage basement area to manually move bags. These staff also worked collaboratively with airline and ground handlings staff until bags were sorted, grouped and dispatched.

"We would also like to thank our customers for their patience during this time and assure them that the technical issue has now been fully resolved," said Delomoney.