LONGYEARBYEN, Svalbard — A six-day software failure sent 684 suitcases onto the wrong routes across the Arctic, leaving 416 passengers without some or all of their checked baggage. The bags began arriving back where they had started, until a claims agent with a 17-year-old notebook spotted the error that the new system had revived.
Tundra Meridian Air said on Tuesday 29 September that a software update installed on 21 September misread a legacy routing code, sending bags between five stops on its Arctic network. The carrier estimates the failure cost 6.8 million Norwegian kroner (about €580,000), including reimbursements, extra flights and courier deliveries.
The notebook in the baggage room
For Niina Saarnio, 58, the crisis meant trading a computer screen for a folding table in Longyearbyen’s airport baggage room. She and three colleagues matched paper tags to passenger claims, then sorted bags by hand for onward flights. Outside, low cloud pressed against the terminal windows; inside, suitcases stacked nearly to the height of the baggage belts.
Saarnio has worked in baggage handling since 2009, when she helped prepare the carrier’s first route-code sheet. She kept a carbon copy in a drawer at home, along with old shift rosters and handwritten notes. When the system started returning bags to their departure points, she brought the sheet to work and recognised the code “RET”.
“We used ‘RET’ to mean return the bag to the transfer belt, not to its original airport,” Saarnio said. “I wrote it down because we needed a short code. I never imagined it would still be steering bags around years later.”
A shortcut outlasts its purpose
The software vendor had converted an old station table during the update, said Muyiwa Omowale, Tundra Meridian Air’s operations director. Its new system treated “RET” as “return to origin”. The error stayed quiet until bags needed a transfer; then they were sent back to their starting airport and re-entered the same routing cycle.
Omowale said the company disabled the old code on 26 September and began checking every transfer by hand. By Tuesday, 621 bags had been reunited with their owners; the remaining 63 were on scheduled courier runs. The carrier has offered affected passengers reimbursement for essential purchases and says it will replace the legacy routing table before restoring automated sorting.
The disruption hit a small airline whose connections matter to residents, researchers and businesses scattered across a vast northern region. “One suitcase can carry a week’s supplies, not just spare clothes,” said Carla Godínez, a transport economist who studies remote services. She estimated that a missed connection can also cost local employers a full day of work when staff are waiting for equipment.
Saarnio’s handwritten sheet is now being scanned and compared against every active code. The company has asked her to help train claims staff on the revised process, and says it will pay her for the extra work. She has kept the original carbon copy, though she plans to write one more note on it: “check the meaning before the machine does.”
