help to avoid lost luggage

[nidnoyham 30]

As you are all well travelled Ladies and Gentlemen, I thought it might help to give some tips on avoiding lost baggage and helping to locate it quickly if the worst happens. :'(

 

Some of this you may think is stating the obvious, but as someone who has worked in this area for a long time, I have seen things that make your teeth curl.

First and most obvious is to have your name on your bag, backpackers are the worst offenders,  when you next travel, look at your bag and ask yourself how easy would it be for a 3rd party to reconcile it with you ?  ::)supposing the handle came off in the conveyor system,

is there a name inside the bag or stuck on the side? Many people worry that their house will be burgled if they put an address on, just your name, City/ Country will do.   It is amazing how many people put just a piece of coloured cloth on the handle to identyify baggage, great if it turns up, but not much good to the person who finds it with no destination tag on. if your bag is found at your departure point with no tag it is a simple job for an agent to enter your name into every flight leaving at that time to find your booking and issue a new tag, usually overwriting the origional number on to match your receipt, of couse it saves time it you put your flight-destination on a seperate tag, these are available at check-in for free.  

 

I know it is very stressful checking in, but do watch the Agent as they tag your bags, if you have 2 bags on the scales at one time, especialy sports type bags with long loose handles of the same colour, it is possible to get the handles mixed up and get 2 tags on 1 bag none on the other.  Also this a personal erk with me,  if you are travelling in a group, ask the Agent to issue each person with their own receipts, it saves time to give them to one passenger on one booking, problem is if your bag is missing at the other end and that person has sailed of with the receipts, you have no receipt for your bag, plus that passengers name is printed on all tags by the computor, so if found with no other I.D , it will not match up with your loss details, not a big problem, but makes life easier if it has your name on.

 And of course if you borrow Auntie Freidas bag, make sure you change the name tag to your name!

 

Security- My advise regarding what you put in your bag is simple, dont put anything in there that you wouldnt put in the post, the smallest padlock is better than nothing, even twisting lots of wire around the zips to hold them together if nowt else.

 

The biggest problem is people who have too much hand baggage at the departure gate, this seldom has a name tag as they think it wont be out of site, if confiscated you get a limited release tag and it gets loaded in the bulkhold, not containerised,  this makes it available to pilfering, honest baggage handlers are in the majority at Heathrow, but I can't speak for other stations.

 

Backpackers, either get a plastic bag youself, or from the airline, I never travel with a pack thats not inside a bag, this does 2 jobs, it makes it less accesable to people, and just as imortant it covers all the loose straps that can catch in a conveyor system, I used to have a knife pre 9-11 just to cut the straps where a buckle gets caught and wedged too tight to undo.  

 

Try to check in about 90mins before departure,  too early and that flight loading equipment wont be ready and your bag may be put to one side and overlooked, if you have golf bags that are taken to special services, have a walk back a bit later if ther is time to see if they have gone or are still on the cart. >

 

The Airline industry doesnt want to loose your bags, it costs money, and PAWOBS (Passengers arriving without bags) are monitered very closely, if targets are not met there is a Stewards Enquiry, and the staff have read another memo from Management.

 

Hope this is of some help

 

Cheers  

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[Eneukman 1]

A small padlock is certainly better than nothing but having said that I recently bought 3 small padlocks and then discovered that one key opened all of them! Also on holiday with 2 friends many years ago, my suitcase key unlocked their cases as well.

 

Alan

[nidnoyham 30]

You are right about those tiny padlocks Alan. But size insn't everything, we used to be able to open the older Samsonite cases with a metal nailfile, even though they had several different keys ! Casual theives are generally lazy, so a lock is a visible deterent, or a strap, take a leaf from the Asian traveller, their baggage has several yards of rope around, but the best policy is to have nothing of value inside your bag. Remenber, if you wouldn't post it, don't pack it.    

[TURBO 1]

Another hint for packing your bags . Don't put your camcorder or tapes in your suitcase . The temperature & dampness will affect your camera and possibly damage your recordings . I wasn't able to use my camcorder for the 1st 4 days of my trip because the inside of the lens was misted up !

 

Before my last trip I bought one of those hard plastic type suitcases with a front combination lock and 2 side key locks . Just as well cause somebody in either Phnom Penh or Bangkok airports had tried to open the case - you could see the scuff marks around the front lock where they tried to force it with a screwdriver ! Plastic is very strong nowadays and they didn't get in . Those type of cases are more expensive but after this experience I think they are worth it .

 

Derek