Italy's civil aviation agency ENAC on Tuesday backpedalled on accusations that workers at Rome's main airport were deliberately creating chronic baggage hold-ups at the hub.
Speaking in a radio interview the day after an ENAC inspection at Fiumicino airport, agency Director General Silvano Manera said that "there is no evidence to sustain a hypothesis of 'sabotage'".
ENAC inspectors descended on Fiumicino on Monday after a month in which recurrent problems with baggage handling at the airport caused havoc for travellers.
Last weekend, travellers had to wait up to an hour and a half for their baggage to come through while thousands of items of luggage were reported lost after handlers failed to load them on to departing planes.
ENAC subsequently said it suspected "sabotage" by workers.
The agency said it believed workers for the four private firms responsible for baggage services at the airport were deliberately slowing down luggage delivery in order to make their jobs easier or to clock 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.
The accusations drew angry protests from trade unions who instead blamed staff shortages, a lack of investment and privatisation.
Top union official Walter Mancini said on Tuesday: "Of course it wasn't sabotage - we told ENAC so. The problem is that there are too many suitcases and too few people to handle them".
"ENAC is also partly responsible because it has failed to monitor the situation," Mancini added.
Manera, who personally supervised Monday's inspection, reported on Tuesday to Transport Minister Alessandro Bianchi.
Bianchi has threatened to revoke the contracts of any of the baggage handling firms found to be wanting and one of them was given 30 days on Tuesday to improve its performance or risk losing its contract.
The transport minister also said an extra 80 people would be put on baggage handling duties at the airport.
"We can't expect miracles but I believe we can avoid a recurrence of any critical situations," Bianchi told reporters after meeting with Manera, Fiumicino management officials and representatives of the airport's baggage handling firms.
The minister also admitted that the baggage handlers were working with "old, outdated and overloaded equipment" and that immediate investment was required to remedy the situation in the long term.
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 Tuesday 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.
