Decreasing the risk of lost luggage

When I travel with my husband, Dave, there’s one thing I never have to worry about: luggage tags. These are the ones with the bar codes that are applied at the airport when we check our bags. As soon as Dave lifts the bags off the carousel, he tears the tags off and drops them in the nearest wastebasket, sometimes while we’re on the move to get to the shuttle.

            But many times I travel solo, or with friends or colleagues, so I have to handle my own tags. I almost always take just one bag, and I’m pretty good at removing the tag at the airport, but sometimes I’m focused on getting home to the point where I don’t notice the tag till I lift the bag out of my car, like the other night when I returned from Mexico. But Dave was right there to take care of that pesky tag for me.

            I’ve yet to go to the airport with an old luggage tag still in place, but it happens to other folks, perhaps more often than we’d think, and the old tags could cause a problem for your new trip, especially if you’re taking a different airline.

            Making it especially important is this: we’re not necessarily talking about the long tags that are wrapped around your bag’s handle. There’s that little bar code tag that is slapped onto your bag, and that can cause a problem. USA Today reports that a TikTok video, posted by someone who appears to be an airport employee at Ontario International in California, warning travelers to make sure that little sticker is not on your bag when you check in for your next flight. If it’s still there, the scanning computer could see the old one, rather than the new one, and send your bag to the wrong destination. (The video, posted August 22, had garnered nearly half a million views inside of a month.)

            The chances of a stray old tag causing such a problem are slim, but they’re not zero. Leaving old tags on your bag     is only going to increase the odds in favor of a problem. Most mix-ups involving luggage occur during connections. Checked bags are moved from one plane to the next very quickly, and most of the time it works well, but only if the system’s computer scanners pick up the bar code and send it to the right location for transport to the next plane.

            There is not a universally used luggage-handling system, but all of them use computers, scanners, conveyor belts and tilt-tables to get the job done. Think of an old-fashioned pinball machine, with various doors and levers routing the ball here and there. Now, think of the ball being encoded and sent on a deliberate route through the maze so that it drops into a pre-determined hole. All of this is happening very quickly, too. There’s not much margin for error, and if a bag winds up somewhere it’s not supposed to be, it’s almost always the fault of the bar code. Not that the code itself is corrupted, but it’s simply the wrong code, and that’s usually because it’s the old sticker.

            But bags to get lost, in spite of the best efforts of travelers to make sure old bar codes are long gone and airport personnel doing their best to route the bags properly. Staffing shortages and high travel demand have caused some issues since the pandemic. The problems are said to be significantly worse in Europe, for unknown reasons.

            What to do if your bag is lost? Some travelers keep detailed lists of what they pack in a checked bag, especially if there’s anything of real value. We always recommend to our clients that they keep really valuable items, like jewelry, on their person or at least in their carry-on bags. But these days, making a list on your phone isn’t that hard, and you can also add photos of particular items. It’s also a good idea to have a photo of your bag, and a description.

            If your bag doesn’t show up at your destination, don’t leave the airport. Go directly to the luggage counter and give them a detailed description of the bag, including the photo. By law, airlines must compensate passengers for “reasonable, verifiable and actual incidental expenses that may incur” due to a delay in getting one’s bags. The maximum liability limit for domestic flights is $3800. If the airline can’t find your bag, they must compensate you for its contents within liability limits. Airlines provide their lost-luggage policy in advance of a trip, too.

            How often does this happen? The Department of Transportation issues a monthly Air Travel Consumer Report, and the most recent says that in July 2023, only ¾ of one percent of bags were mishandled by U.S. airlines. That doesn’t sound like much, but it translates into 339,618 bags (out of over 45 million). The airline with the best record is Allegiant Air, with 0.16%, and at the bottom of the list is United (1.07%). Delta, the carrier used most often by our clients, was sixth overall at 0.63%. Compared to July 22, for virtually the same number of total bags handled, the mishandled rate increased by about 60,000 bags.

            The odds of our bags arriving with our flight are heavily in our favor, but there are things we can do to increase the odds, like removing that pesky barcode when we bring our bag home. We’ll help you with little tips like this, and lots more. Give us a call!