While traveling internationally is happening more frequently now after the pandemic and more countries are opening its gates, unfortunately with the winter holidays of 2022, the airline industry is showing that it’s still not the same as it once was prior to the pandemic.
There are staff shortages, customer service issues and needless to say, stranded individuals and lost luggage.
We had this experience last week and I want to delve into it.
May it be due to the holidays or staff shortages, the cases of lost luggage is happening more frequently.
It’s important to note that when there is lost luggage, most airlines partner with a third party company to deliver the luggage and there are times where those individuals with your luggage, may be in a difficult position to not being able to deliver your luggage that it ends up somewhere.
As many have been putting Apple Airtags to track their baggage, you can see what happens when United Airlines was under fire for losing one person’s luggage:
But let’s move away from negligence and it’s an honest mistake, what do you do?
- Look at your airlines website and make sure they have a lost luggage section. Airlines do give out bonus points and also some sort of discount if your luggage are not found within 20 or more minutes. [Please note: Depends on airline and location].
- Have your boarding pass and the stickers ready. The stickers identify your luggage # and also, many airport websites have a find my luggage.
- Go to your airline section to file a claim. They will have those people look for your luggage first and if not found, they will put in a claim.
Baggage Issues
In the case of my mother’s luggage, a few interesting things happened, as she was traveling internationally. One, she was flying Delta Airlines from Haneda Airport in Japan to Seattle and then to another location via Alaska Airlines.
She arrived to Seattle and got her luggage and checked them in to Alaska Airlines. Please note that the Delta tags were still on there. The luggage # was on the Delta boarding pass and not the Alaska Airlines.
While Delta showed that both luggage successfully arrived to its destination, one luggage was found, the other was lost. The airlines are not sure what happened but apologized and said it could have been due to the weather and holidays. They said it may come on the next flights from Seattle to the location and to keep checking.
I kept checking and the luggage did not arrive the following day. I tried again on Tuesday and then sure enough, it was found and delivered.
Fortunately, that was at the end of the trip, not at the beginning or during. But that happened to my brother to his trip to Europe a few months ago. When he went to France, AirFrance lost his luggage and he had no idea if they would recover it. So, during his trip, he had to buy a bunch of cheap clothes and supplies, while on his family trip to France. Eventually it was recovered from Amsterdam in several days and delivered to his hotel.
Personally, my feeling is that travel service is not how it was before 2020. The airlines faced so much restrictions, lay offs and are now playing catch up. But while the pandemic maybe over, novel coronavirus is not and those staff who catch it are out for many days, co-workers who get it are off for many days and that leads to a shortage. Then you have the bomb cyclone weather that brought snow to the East Coast and now the bomb cyclone in California with this atmospheric river and literally, the weather has brought chaos during the holidays.
So, many factors that are affecting travel right now that insurance may be something you need to consider and while not ideal, sometimes being prepared to purchase clothing and supplies may be necessary in another country if you lose your luggage, unless you put something in your carry-on bag. Which I do recommend having something, considering certain country sizes are not the same as the US.
But do know to please be prepared as lost luggage is now more of a possibility these days as traveling services are not 100% just yet.
