At the airline check in at London Heathrow, Guy has three
bags. He puts them down and says to the young lady, 'I'd like you to send this one to Los Angeles, that one to Hong Kong and the last one to Durban.' Her face shows signs of confusion before her training
takes over and she says, 'I'm afraid we can't
do that, sir.'
'Why not?'
demands Guy, 'you did the last time I flew with you.' I have the picture!
The situation: you are trying to book a flight online.
Inadvertently, you insert the information in the wrong order, the
Departure date is later than the Arrival date. How does the
system cope? Well for one site this notice comes up on screen:
'Our system requires that you depart for your Destination before you
arrive at it.'
Footnote: The above snippet was kindly sent in by Junie.
After his return from Rome, Will couldn't
find his luggage in the
London Gatwick airport baggage area. So he went to the lost luggage office and told the woman there that his bags hadn't
shown up on the carousel. She smiled and told him not to worry because they were trained professionals
and he was in good hands.
'Now', she asked Will, 'has your plane arrived yet?'
Lost Luggage Destination
The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are
composed entirely of lost airline luggage. Mark Russell
Ten Unusual Baggage Left Behind On London's Public Transport System
Samurai sword
Prosthetic arm
A coffin
A stuffed fox
A puffer fish
A lawnmower
A park bench
WW2 gas masks
A home vasectomy kit
A pair of breast implants
Funny Lost Baggage
However, the toothless man who came in one day asking for his dentures
was less fortunate. He brought back what he had identified as his own set a
few hours later, complaining of "rubbing".
Will and Guy have learned that in the 1960s, the most popular thing found
was umbrellas. Over 90,000 were lost in a typical year, we were informed.
The number handed in today is nearer 7,000. However, there are shelves full
of clothing, bags and books which dominate among the near 200,000 items
recovered each year.
This
article about lost baggage really isn't
funny. It's
more a cautionary tale. Perhaps these statistics will act as a warning to split your clothes between two suitcases, especially if travelling with
a family group.
I expect you know
of someone who has lost baggage on a flight. The reason that we guess you know of a friend or relative who has lost a suitcase is that 1 in 100 people lose baggage. Here is a report by Société
Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques', better known as SITA.
30 million pieces of airline luggage, approximately 1%, will go astray this year.
SITA who monitor baggage in over 200
countries, said virtually all missing bags would be returned to their owners within an average of 31 hours. However about 200,000 pieces (less than 1%) would never be found because they are lost or even stolen.
Francesco Violante, managing director of SITA said the air transport industry spent about $2.5 billion a year tracking and returning luggage. Part of this figure went on compensating passengers for lost
items. More bags are going missing due to airport congestion, short transition times, and switches from one airline to another.
What are needed is better systems which can link bags to their
owners. SITA concluded that the number one cause of late-arriving bags was mishandling when luggage is transferred between flights. This accounted for 62% of hold-ups in 2009.
Secondly was failure to load
bags at the departure point, this made up 15% of delays. Attaching the incorrect destination tags at check-in accounted for just 3 percent.
Footnote: Please send us your funny stories of lost
baggage.
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