Lost luggage I 37
L
ast year, more than 23 million suitcases were “mishandled” during their journey through the world’s airports. We say
“mishandled” because luggage is rarely lost entirely – according to the 2016 Baggage Report from SITA, an IT company for the air transport industry, only 6 per cent of misplaced baggage is never returned to its owner, while 79 per cent is simply delayed. Still, a delayed case is at best inconvenient or at worst costly in terms of time and money, a huge source of stress and damaging to an itinerary. I recently flew to Iceland with Easyjet only to find on arrival (after an hour’s wait at the carousel in Keflavik airport) that no one’s luggage had been put on the aircraft in London. After chasing down a member of staff, everyone had to fill in forms and queue while the information was manually entered into a computer. We were told that up to Ð25 (US$28) per person, per day, could be reimbursed for clothes and toiletries, but this wasn’t going to go far in a city such as Reykjavik and a country many people were visiting for outdoor activities. My case was delivered to my hotel after two days. I was later told the problem had been caused by a baggage belt failure at Gatwick. A recent forum thread on
businesstraveller.com revealed some of our readers’ experiences. MartynSinclair was attending a conference in Sweden when his luggage didn’t turn up: “The worst feeling wasn’t necessarily not having my clothes but nobody really being able to say where the case actually was and when I would get it back. Going to a black-tie event in jeans and a T-shirt was novel, especially since I was making a toast.” LuganoPirate travelled with Swiss from Johannesburg to Milan via Zurich. He checked in nine
businesstraveller.com
items, one of which was a box of 12 bottles of Rose’s limejuice cordial packed into a wine carton. It went missing. “It was just before Christmas and I think the baggage handlers thought they would have a party, as it never showed up. Imagine their disappointment. Another case with clothes failed to arrive as well but Swiss compensated us with just over SFr1,500 [US$1,545], which was more than I expected.”
HEAVY LIFTING A recent BBC2 documentary called
City in the Sky looked at baggage handling in Dubai airport, which has the world’s largest automated luggage system. The reporter said: “In just three hours during the morning rush they process more than 50,000 bags. Annually, the airport handles a staggering 57 million items.” Suitcases are shunted on to
yellow trays that are whisked off on conveyor belts to an “early bag store” for those who have checked in ahead of time, or direct to Concourse 2 (either East or West) for “final sortation”. The last leg from the airport to the plane is where “good old-fashioned muscle power” comes in, and human handlers take over. It’s hard work but, in the UK, a typical salary is just £15,000-£18,000 (US$19,527- $23,432) a year, while baggage handlers for the main US airlines earn on average US$21,000. Even in the most finely honed
of operations, transferring flights at a hub is often where cases go astray – 45 per cent of missing bags are down to transfer mishandling. The second-most common reason is a failure to load them in the first place (19 per cent), while ticketing and tagging errors, arrival mishandling, security issues and bag mix-ups all play a part too. Airports, of course, don’t want to claim responsibility. According
to a spokesperson from London Heathrow (LHR), it is down to the 83 airlines that fly in and out of its various terminals. Each carrier employs one of ten different baggage-handling companies at LHR, and has its own statistics on baggage performance. Easyjet says it mishandles about 0.5 bags per 1,000 people that check one in (the average worldwide is 6.5).
KNOW THE RULES When it comes to luggage,
airlines are governed by the Montréal Convention, which applies to all 191 member states of the International Civil Aviation Organisation. If you have flown into or out of an EU airport and your suitcase is lost, damaged or delayed, you may be entitled to compensation of up to Ð1,220 (US$1,370) from the airline. The EU says: “If you are travelling with expensive items, you might be able – for a fee – to obtain a
compensation limit higher than Ð1,220 by making a special advance declaration to the airline, at the latest when you check in. Though the best thing is really to take out private travel insurance.” If you don’t have any luck getting a response for compensation from the airline, you can contact the Civil Aviation Authority.
GETTING SORTED Considering roughly a million
people are in the air at any one time, it’s amazing that the industry has cut the number of mishandled bags by almost 51 per cent since 2007, creating savings of US$22 billion (according to SITA). Technology has played a big part in this, and passengers are enjoying faster check-ins thanks to automated bag-drop and luggage tag printing. Home- printed tags, e-receipts sent to smartphone apps and electronic bag tags also help.
NOVEMBER 2016
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