It could be the biggest gathering of unaccompanied luggage in history. The airport operator BAA needs 20,000 suitcases, holdalls and backpacks for a live trial of a baggage handling system at Heathrow's fifth terminal.
Terminal Five, due to open in March 2008, contains 13km of baggage chutes, conveyor belts and storage facilities built by a Dutch company, Vanderlande. Early tests are under way with a few hundred battered bags, marked with their weight, constantly circulating around the system.
But a large-scale exercise will take place next year to see whether the technology can take the strain of about 30,000 air travellers a day. Vanderlande is scouring the travel industry for lost, abandoned and long forgotten luggage to use in the trial and for "offcuts" from suitcase companies that have failed quality control.
Frans van Duren, a Vanderlande spokesman, said: "Every airport has a substantial number of bags which are never collected. They're kept in storage for a certain period and then the airports sell them. We'll fill them with heavy materials and different things and then use them to test the system."
Suitcase companies are lending their support. Samsonite said it had donated 80 new suitcases for baggage handling trials some years ago. Lancashire-based Antler said it had also been asked to participate.
