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Author: Caterina Christakos
Source: ezinearticles.com
Whenever I’m waiting at a baggage carousel for my luggage to come through, there’s always a voice in the back of my mind saying that it’s not going come-that, with the millions of things that can go wrong in an airport, why should I expect my bags to be in the right place? And when you add in all the other annoyances that go along with flying these days, both in the airports and on the cramped, smelly planes, the airlines haven’t exactly earned my trust lately. I’m always half expecting them to lose my luggage simply through sheer ineptitude and carelessness. But, for most of my life so far, I’ve been lucky.
That is, until recently: Traveling from Denver to New York on a major domestic carrier that shall remain nameless, I arrived at JFK only to find-after hours of waiting around, making calls, and dealing with unhelpful customer representatives-that my bags were in Phoenix. Things turned out fine; I got my luggage back within two days. But the experience left me wondering, how does luggage get processed, and how does it get lost? What can do to make sure it gets to the right place?
Where Baggage Goes after Check-in
When checking in, you hand your bag to an airline employee, who affixes a barcode that contains details about you, your address, your flight, and your destination. The bag then gets sent into the inner workings of the airport, where a network of conveyor belts electronically reads the barcode and directs your bag to the correct flight. This is the first area where things can go wrong. Barcodes may be poorly printed or partially obscured, or the check-in person may have entered an incorrect piece of information. In other cases, bags may slip off of the conveyor belt or get caught in the machinery. There are workers to fix these issues, but it may take a while to extract a stuck bag, which can cause it to miss its flight.
After the automated system delivers a bag to its destination, workers wheel them out in bins and load them onto the planes. In many airports, workers are taught to visually verify that the tags match the flight, but this doesn’t always happen, and human error is naturally a factor.
But the biggest trouble area of all is transferring luggage from one flight to another. A single flight may have passengers who will be transferring to as many as twenty different connecting flights. This presents obvious challenges to baggage handlers, but when you add in factors like late flights, bad weather, and tight time crunches, you can see how problems might occur. The good news is that, when bags miss their connections, they’re usually still on the grid, and they can easily be forwarded to their destination on the next flight.
Tips for Preventing Lost Luggage
1. Carry your bags: When possible, the best solution is not to check your bags. Airlines are becoming more strict about carry-on procedures, but if you’re just taking a short trip, pack lightly. Fit everything into one medium bag, and keep it close to you.
2. Put your contact information on your bag: Attach a hand-written tag with all of your contact information. In the event of a barcode error, your hand-written tag is the only way to trace your bag to you.
3. Check in early, and book connecting flights that leave plenty of time: Tight time-frames are the main reason why bags get lost. The more time airline employees have to get your bag to the right place, the better.
4. Remove old barcode tags: This is a no-brainer, but it’s also easy to forget. Even in the same trip, your bags will require new tags for the return journey, so take the old ones off as soon as you think about it.
Caterina Christakos is a published author and product reviewer. Read her latest reviews of seven 7 jeans and joico hair products now.