Sure, you take blonde and I'll take the one in the turban...
Posted on 03/21/2006 6:27:15 AM PST by COUNTrecount
If you've ever been frustrated after an airline lost your luggage, you're in the good company of millions of others. An estimated 30 million bags were temporarily lost by airlines in 2005, and 200,000 of those bags were never reunited with their owners, according to an industry report released Monday.
The report by SITA Inc., a company that provides technology solutions for the air transport industry, also noted that "the problem of mishandled baggage is worsening on both sides of the Atlantic."
The 30 million misdirected bags comprised only 1 percent of the 3 billion bags processed last year by airports, up from 0.7 percent in 2004, said SITA, which is promoting technology it says would reduce the problem.
Last year, mishandled luggage cost world airlines $2.5 billion, compared with $1.6 billion in 2004, SITA said, in a report released before Tuesday's airline and airport passenger services exposition in Paris. The jump partly reflects improvements in data collection, but also the increasing costs resulting from inadequate baggage management.
Greater airport congestion, tight connection times, increased transfers among airlines and stricter security are all contributing to more late or missing bags, said SITA, a Geneva-based company that is owned by the airlines, airports and other international air transport industry companies.
But the biggest problem is the growing number of passengers, whose additional bags cause delays and complicate handling, it said.
"Growth is welcome but it has to be better managed if airlines and airports want to improve the passenger experience by eliminating delays from the system," said Francesco Violante, SITA's managing director.
Mishandling during baggage transfer was the largest single cause last year of a bag failing to arrive with its owner at the intended destination. Other bags were temporarily lost because of airport personnel failing to properly load baggage, ticketing
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I can sure tell you about handling baggage though.
I watch the baggage handlers every time I get a chance. Midway, in Chicago, is one of the worst in the way they treat your luggage.
Here, take my wife...please.) ;-)
Twenty-nine million eight-hundred thousand returned out of 30 million is pretty goog percentage.
Sure, you take blonde and I'll take the one in the turban...
i agree with you , misleading headlines, only 200,000 bags lost out of 30 million is a good percentage and an even better percentage is 200,000 out of all transported, which must be an astronomical number. Between tight connections and load limits on smaller planes, bags will get delayed sometimes. It happens infrequently enough that it shouldnt deter someone from checking bags versus the idiots who try to carry on half of their wardrobe on the plane to save 5 or 10 minutes at destination.
Not with your luck ;-)
My luggage was temporarily lost. It was quite impressive really--it set or at least tied a record. They lost my suitcase on a direct flight. Wow. But they did return it, or at least a mysterious stranger in plainclothes and an unmarked vehicle did.
And how many of those are really lost versus just missing a flight. The airline knows that it is stuck in Chicago and will be on the next flight out, but they don't have a good way of telling customers that.
The only time I "lost" a bag was when my flight arrived at an airport a little ahead of time and was able to switch to an earlier connecting flight home instead of killing three hours at the airport. My bag didn't make it onto the early flight and ended up at the airline's luggage jail until I picked it up the next day.
[petronski ducks...]
Your real name wouldn't by chance be Gaylord Focker, would it?
A few other times, we've found our bags in the "lockup" versus the baggage carousel, since the airlines would send the luggage out on an earlier flight. You'd hope that they would at least advise the traveler that this possibility exists, but they don't.
I was on a Quantas flight from LA to Brisbane, Australia last year. We were delayed a few hours in Auckland, New Zealand and my bags arrived in Brisbane before I did.
I discovered this when my bags didn't appear on the baggage claim carosel for my flight. I went to the customer service counter and saw my bags already sitting on one of their shelves.
TM
A couple of years ago, the TSA and baggage handlers at SAX were caught in a sting operation stealing from passengers bags.
Actually, United will tell you precisely that. It beats heck out of sitting near the baggage carousel wondering WTF happened to the bags, or getting meaningless bafflegab from a series of mendacious dolts.
That's kinda like saying, "Man shoots 1000 people. Nine hundered ninety-eight survive."
I am a frequent business traveller (more than 60 flights a year....) and in the last year, I have had my bag lost twice. Once it was returned to me the next day and once it took 3 days.
But I agree wholeheartedly with your argument about carry-on luggage. I see people with bags that could hold a dead body and they are stuffing them into the overhead. And the other issue for me is the number of people who can't count to TWO. TWO bags going on the plane, people.
I think it would be best just to ask polite, leading interrogatories: "If you know that my bags are on a different flight, or stranded back at JFK, you should just tell me that. I'm prepared for that kind of information."
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