On Bad Packers:You can definitely tell the difference between the business traveler and the person who travels only once or twice a year. The business traveler has one suitcase and knows exactly what they need. Families who only travel once or twice a year bring everything they could possibly require from home.
It does amaze us when people are going to, say,
Las Vegas for a weekend getaway, and you can tell they’re only going there to gamble and lay by the pool, yet they bring these ridiculously sized suitcases. Why bring more than a couple pairs of shorts? People will bring four different outfits per day. And the cruise ship crowds flying to
Fort Lauderdale,
Miami and
San Juan tend to have packing issues, too, with suitcase after suitcase completely full.
Then there are the cases of just poor decision making when packing -- such as tossing a bottle of wine in as an afterthought. We see this a lot on flights from
Europe or
San Francisco -- the bottle breaks and you pick up their bag and there’s stuff dripping out the bottom.
On Items Going Missing From Inside Bags:I’ve heard about baggage handlers stealing stuff, but people talk in really general terms. They don’t break it down about who got caught and what was stolen. You just kind of hear rumblings. But I honestly don’t know how it happens because as a baggage handler you’re in very wide-open areas of the airport -- you have people all around you and there are cameras everywhere. I always wonder how people have the time to go through bags and take something. But by no means is it always the baggage crew stealing stuff. Passengers will steal stuff in the claim areas, too, and a lot of times you catch them.
There used to be a scam going in
Las Vegas where there was a group of people who would just show up at the claim area and start grabbing bags off the belt and walk out the front door. If they got caught they would say “My bag looks just like it,” which could be true. Unfortunately, there’s not really anything to safeguard against that. Some airports have secured claim areas where you have to show your claim receipt as you leave, but it’s not the norm.
A lot of times you might think something was stolen, but it just fell out of your bag. If you don’t have the zipper closed, or there’s a tear or rip in the bag, a lot of the small stuff falls out -- Swiss army knives, keys, wallets, cell phones.
There are huge lost and found boxes at any airport, and we’ve got more cell phones and chargers than you can imagine.
On Packing Smart:It happens that the routing tags just fall off or bags get mis-tagged. And if your nametag is not on your bag, it’s really hard to reunite passengers with their luggage. If you’re flying to
Paris or
Frankfurt or one of the big airports, you’re likely to be fine. But if you’re flying into some small airport in the middle of
Europe, you may never see your bag again.
Be smart and put your name and itinerary on a sheet of paper inside your bag, because if there’s nothing on the outside to ID the bag we’ll go looking inside to see if there’s some way to locate the passenger.
Also, if you’re a family of four traveling, don’t have a separate suitcase for each person. Mix and match -- have one outfit for each person in each suitcase. That way if one bag gets lost or destroyed, you’re not stranded and at least it doesn’t ruin your vacation.
Almost once a week, someone will say, “You lost my bag,” claiming that their heart medication or diabetes medication was in there. And I’m thinking, if something that important is in their checked luggage, what on earth is in their carry on? Whether it’s medication or materials for an important presentation, it’s just common sense -- don’t put anything in your checked bag that you can’t live without once you get there.
If you’re shipping anything really valuable, send it Fed Ex or UPS. We see people that go hunting out in
Nebraska or
Wyoming, kill a deer and ship the meat back.
Then we’ll lose the cooler, and they’ll claim there’s $500 worth of venison in there that’s going to go bad. If you really can’t risk it not showing up, don’t ship it with the airlines. Airlines have really limited responsibility. And not only are we not going to cover it, we can’t replace it -- if it’s that valuable to you, make sure it’s insured.
