Gatwick Airport is bringing in its own staff to help with a luggage crisis amid fears there could be further travel chaos this weekend.
Staff shortages affecting baggage-handling company Swissport led to some passengers at the West Sussex airport having to fly abroad without their luggage last weekend.
Others ran into long delays in reclaiming bags having flown back to Gatwick.
A number of UK airlines use Swissport and one of them, Monarch, is understood to be ending its contract with the company, although it is carrying on using them for the time being.
Swissport has said it put extra staff on last weekend to deal with "off-schedule arriving aircraft" but added that it was still not able to accommodate the handling of all these off-schedule arriving planes.
However, it is understood that the company is using staff on zero-hours contract who could be reluctant to work unsocial hours. The baggage problem last weekend was at its most acute between 10.45pm on Saturday until the early hours of Sunday.
A Gatwick airport spokesman said: "Bags on 95% of scheduled flights into Gatwick are delivered to passengers in the reclaim halls within 55 minutes. We want all bags on all flights to be delivered within this timeframe and so are working closely with the small number of airlines which employ Swissport to help improve the baggage delivery service.
"While Swissport is directly employed by the airlines to provide ground handling services, including baggage delivery, Gatwick has been supplementing their staff by up to 25% to assist with baggage delivery and other ground handling services in recent weeks."
The spokesman went on: "Gatwick will continue to carefully monitor Swissport's performance and offer assistance to them as required over the remainder of the summer to minimise the impact on passengers and safeguard our expected level service."
Monarch Airlines would not comment on contractual arrangements with Swissport. Monarch did say: "We work closely with a number of third party service providers across our bases to provide services such as baggage handling.
"We are working closely with Gatwick airport and our ground handling agent to improve service levels for customers flying with us."
British Airways said: "We have been given no reason to expect any issues this weekend at Gatwick, either from the airport authority or Swissport.
"We will continue to work with Swissport to improve the levels of service to our customers."