Edit: Thanks for taking the time out to reply. I’m enjoying reading all the different explanations and view points.
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Airlines don’t lose any luggage, airports do.
I’ve not heard of any cases of a loaded luggage that was lost. The losing happens when it is in the logistics of the airports, which is not personell of the airlines.
There’s a big difference in volume, quality management, ressources differing from airport to airport. The worse the processes are and the less ressources are allocated to those processes, the more luggage will be lost by the airport logistics.
Speaking as someone whose luggage is still not with me, human error is a factor. Specifically misapplied airline luggage tags, getting someone else’s tag on my bag.
Lesson learned: when the ticket agent tells you they’ll take care of it, insist on watching them actually label your luggage.
Had my suitcase mistakenly taken by a passenger once. Airline tracked it down and got it to me the next day. (Air Canada, at Heathrow.)
The two suit cases weren’t even similar.
People can be daft after a longish flight.
This is an example of how baggage can be lost, albeit rare; and can be found again.
Which is nice.
Coming back from my mom’s funeral was the day of that giant storm back in June that interrupted travel through the midwest. Of course, I was going through Chicago.
A United gate agent went above & beyond getting me on another flight, but on American the next morning so I had to sleep in CLT (along with others). United transferred the bag and had the receipts yet somehow American left it sitting there when I got on the plane.
It took like 6 effing days to get it back.
And it’s a big, hardsided, *green* Samsonite bag, so it’s relatively easy to find.
I watched a random documentary about this not long ago. Can’t find it, but it was about Atlanta’s airport. They talked about this. Yes the technology helps a lot, but there’s a lot of luggage. Like, a LOT, they handle 100k bags a day. It’s just bound to happen, for various reason, not tagged correctly, barcode got damaged, baggage handler made a mistake, got lost somewhere in the miles of conveyor belts, etc.
Sadly no system is perfect, even if the error rate is very low it’s still a lot of errors due to the sheer volume.
I’ve recently started putting AirTags into my luggage, removed the piezo speaker and stashed in the zipped lining of my checked bags.
On my last 3 trips, my bags have gone through several more airports than my own flights have gone through. The very last trip, the bag was lost for 2 days until they found it and delivered it to the hotel.
It happens, but the AirTags have been the best solution to seeing exactly where the bag is, so when you report it as missing/lost, you can give them exact locations and specifications of where/when it was last.
I can’t recommend it enough. I’m an Android person that carries both iPhone and Android phones.
Yes, there are non-Apple variants of these tags, but the majority of the traveling population carries iPhones, so the precision is much higher when trying to locate bags using AirTags vs. Tile or other branded solutions.
Also, keep in mind that the logistics in airports is run on software that hasn’t changed in 60+ years, backed by decades-old COBOL and Lisp and Fortran running on mainframes. It’s not modern, and it’s not running in containers nor Kubernetes clusters. It’s prehistoric.
Software is pretty unreliable generally, but a lot of it is people being lazy and incompetent.
i think often they accidentally break it, and then they rather tell you its lost for some reason instead of admitting they aggressively mishandled it
Accordinf to SITA (main software to manage mishandled baggage) about 0.75% bags are mishandled. At 4 billion (with a b) bags checks in per year that is about 30 million mishandled bags. The majority of mishandled baggage occurs during transfer as people transferring may move faster than the bags and those are left behind
One reason why bags get is they don’t make the plane. Some airlines take bags until 30 minutes before takeoff which puts a strain on airport security and airline baggage handlers. If there’s a large volume of bags already in the bag conveyor system, it could take several minutes for your bag to be screened by security, and if the bag needs to be searched that adds time. Even if it doesn’t need to be opened, the bag may not reach the baggage handlers before they load all the bags into carts and take them to the plane. Sending someone back for a couple last minute bags is often not an option. due to low staffing.
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