Carry it, or lose it.
Even the occasional traveler can typically recall at least one horror story involving an airline losing or ‘misplacing’ their checked luggage. It has certainly happened to me, and seemingly always at the most inopportune times! Is there a way to avoid this?
Well, it has been suggested to me that I should clearly mark my bag, or my personal favorite ‘use luggage that stands out from other common brands and colors’. I suppose that may assist in identifying your check-in bag, if it has already been misplaced by the airline, but is there another way to insure that your luggage will make it to its destination? You can never be 100% unless you’re carrying it on, but there are some other ways to help increase your chances of your luggage arriving with you. The travel insurance review website has a decent article on this very subject, 27 Ways to Eliminate Lost Luggage. This article does make for a good read with some really helpful suggestions, but there is another simple, rather low-cost solution to this problem.
If you have a destination address and absolutely need to make sure that your luggage arrives with you, ship it! The actual amount of misplaced luggage is pretty astounding… For example, by August of 2007, the number of reported cases during that year alone were at 437,141! United Airlines held the title for the most mishandled, weighing in at 29,331 mishandled pieces of luggage, while the best record came from Aloha Airlines, with only 1,375 mishandled to-date. To give you some even scarier statistics, here are the average number of mishandled bags per 1000 at varying airlines (in 2007): (from Aviation Consumer Protection Division reports)
- American Eagle – 23.96 per 1000
- British Airways – 23 per 1000
- SkyWest – 10.04 per 1000
- US Airways – 9.61 per 1000
- Delta – 9.18 per 1000
- American – 7.28 per 1000
- Hawaiian – 3.10 per 1000
Those figures don’t give me much faith in allowing any airline to handle my luggage! According to Peter Greenberg, “There are two kinds of luggage. Carry-on and lost.” Greenberg has some pretty good advice on how to better assist your luggage in arriving at its destination:
With airline mishandling issues as bad as they are, not to mention the problem of theft at the carousel, I tend to err on the side of caution. If you do plan on carrying your luggage on, this free luggage allowance tool may help. With the current reality of lost, misplaced, or pilfered luggage in our airports, one must take additional steps to increase the odds of our belongings showing up where we want them too!
Ah yes, I would have to say that I have at least 3 permanently lost pieces of luggage myself. The most frustrating part to deal with was when trying to get compensation for them. I still keep wishing and hoping that they will show up (I lost some priceless, sentimental items). Interesting video on the shipping option. It could be a bit expensive, but I suppose that may be better than losing your entire wardrobe!
I would have to agree that it may just be worth the money if it means that I will have my backpack and all of its contents when I arrive in a foreign country. If I have planned a trip for a couple months and every single thing I brought is suddenly lost – with the exception of my carry-on items – I think I’d be in a pretty rough spot. Besides, I would probably lose my cool and ‘flip my lid’, which could be an issue…
On another note though, it may be difficult to ship a backpack internationally if you really have no destination address. The only way around this would probably be to have a hotel, etc except delivery; but then you’re trusting even more people to keep your luggage secure.
So basically you can expect anywhere from 1 to 2 bags out of every 100 that pass thru to get ‘mishandled’!? Those are some scary stats there! I’ve always been worried about my pack or luggage disappearing on me. You feel a bit out of place when you arrive somewhere new anyways, the added stress isn’t needed!
I have always gone by the rule-of-thumb that the only way to keep your luggage completely safe is to carry it on. Nowadays though I think most airlines only allow 1 carry-on of less than 40lb and less than 45″ total (ie 22″ x 14″ x 9″). That’s just not viable for most excursions.
It doesn’t surprise me that British Airways would be one of the top contendors on the average per 1000 mishandled! Over here that’s a pretty common thing. I always dread flying in AND out of most airports in the UK.