Civil aviation inspectors descended on Rome's main airport of Fiumicino on Monday to investigate a baggage handling crisis which has been causing havoc for travellers.
On Sunday, travellers were waiting up to an hour and a half for their baggage to come through while complaints mounted over thousands of items of lost luggage which handlers had failed to load on to departing planes.
Italy's civil aviation agency ENAC suspects "sabotage" by workers is to blame for the problem, which has been going on for almost a month.
ENAC believes workers for the four private firms responsible for baggage services at the airport are deliberately slowing down luggage delivery in order to make their jobs easier or to work overtime.
It said workers were using tactics such as sticking chewing gum over barcode readers that sort the luggage and using plastic bags to jam conveyer belts.
It said it also suspected them of interfering with the electric trolleys used to transport baggage to and from planes, saying the trolleys were often found with no power or broken wiring.
ENAC Director General Silvano Manera personally supervised Monday's investigation of baggage services by 10 agency inspectors.
"We are collecting facts and data to back our hypothesis of sabotage," he said.
Manera is to report on Tuesday to Transport Minister Alessandro Bianchi, who has threatened to revoke the contracts of any baggage handling firms found to be wanting.
Trade unions, meanwhile, expressed outrage at ENAC's accusations.
They said the idea of sabotage was "pure fantasy" and instead blamed staff shortages, a lack of investment and privatisation.
Top union official Walter Mancini said that "they are trying to blame the workers when the problem is the system. There are too many suitcases and too few people to handle them.
"The airlines have demanded that the baggage firms reduce their costs and they have done so by cutting down on staff".
Consumer rights' associations said the emergency had been predictable and accused the airport and baggage service firms of failing to put on extra staff to deal with the summer increase in travellers.
They demanded compensation for inconvenienced passengers.
Some 2,000 baggage handlers are in service every day at Fiumicino, which deals with an estimated 100,000 daily passengers, rising to 120,000 in the peak holiday season.
No delays were reported on Monday for travellers waiting for their luggage but the airport was still struggling to deal with a backlog of thousands of suitcases that have to be sent on to their owners.
Italian screen legend Sofia Loren was among the thousands of passengers passing through Fiumicino on Monday.
When asked if she was worried about problems with her luggage, the actress, who was catching a plane to Geneva, replied: "I don't get worked up about things like that. Losing one's luggage can happen - it's already happened to me a number of times. It's not something that bothers me particularly".
