West Lothian based Eagle Couriers seeing baggage repatriation arm spreading wings

Eagle Couriers, the Bathgate independent courier business, has announced its specialist airline lost baggage service is now looking to ascend further and team up with more global carriers. The company’s Eagle Aviation arm is now the UK and Northern Ireland’s top baggage repatriation company, and has landed global clients including Emirates, Jet2, Virgin Atlantic, Loganair, Etihad, and Ryanair.

The business now handles and returns more than 350,000 bags a year, providing a daily service to 33 airports and 120 airline groups, to most of the main Scottish and English regional airports, including Inverness, plus London Heathrow and Gatwick as well as Belfast and Dublin. Eagle Couriers said the growth of the airport-focused division came about after the business, which has 45 employees, pivoted into new revenue streams during the pandemic.

Eagle Aviation was able to quickly build on the network of THS Couriers, a Paisley-based business acquired by Eagle Couriers before the pandemic but wound down as air travel virtually stopped. As major travel resumed, it spotted the opportunity to fill a UK-wide gap in the baggage repatriation space after rival firms had halted operations, and quickly secured contracts to return lost luggage across the UK with Aer Lingus, Swiss and Austrian Airlines, alongside awards from British Airways, Iberia, KLM, Air France and Lufthansa.

Eagle Aviation operations manager Samuel Milne commented: “The launch of Eagle Aviation allowed us to maintain some existing baggage repatriation contracts we held under the THS brand, and when another provider left the market, it opened up new opportunities for us. We are looking at a number of ways in which we can grow the business and work in partnership with other global airline groups.”

Eagle Couriers Managing Director Fiona Deas said she was pleased at how the company, had weathered the pandemic and adapted to changing demands, recruiting another 70 drivers and adding several office-based staff to the payroll after winning a major contract with National Services Scotland to collect staff PCR tests from every care home in Scotland for onward delivery to labs for testing.