Checking Luggage

I always understood the rules to be that you could only have one carry-on and one laptop bag. A second carry-on is supposed to be checked.

 

On the occasion when I check bags containing notes, tapes or work-related items, it gives me the shivers until I get them back in my hands.

If possible, those things travel with me in my carry-on. At least, the most important items do.

 

Sorry, Pastor, was that for me? I posted two pictures of the same camera bag, just to show how big it is.

 

Just to say, the average of mishandled bags for Delta is about 6 in every 1,000. It happens, and if you saw what we had to do to try and get these things to the right place at the right time with not enough people, you would understand.

 

True as that is, bd77, even at 6/10ths of a percent industrywide, that's still 250,000 pieces lost per month domestically. And your odds for loss go up when you have to connect. And they go up again on international routes.

 

The average of my bags being mishandled by Delta is rather higher.

And I know people who, when flying, trust their baggage to a separate airline entirely:



Bags meet people at the hotel.

 

I've lost a bag once, and I've been flying several times a year since I was 4. Reports of the frequency of lost luggage are exaggerated.

 

Hell has moved south?

I thought Hell was Atlanta-Hartsfield.

 

It is. Especially when it's snowing in the northeastern corridor.

 

Here's my issue with the luggage: when it gets misplaced, the airlines don't seem to have a fucking clue what happens to it.

On my recent cross-country excursion, my bags and I were supposed to go (and I'm picking random cities for privacy) from Portland to Cleveland to Baltimore.

When I was switched to a flight to D.C. (closest they could get me to Baltimore by when I needed to be there), the airline clerk who made the switch told me he would stop my bags from going Cleveland-Baltimore and would have them sent to D.C.

When I got to D.C., my bags weren't there. The airline's customer service told me the airline clerk was an idiot and couldn't have possibly made my bags go to D.C. instead of Baltimore. When customer service looked up my bags on their system, it showed they were still in Portland.

Two days later, after repeated trips to the Baltimore airport (the one I hadn't actually flown into), my bags were found there. Not found through the computer system, because that showed they were in Cleveland, but they were physically discovered in Baltimore. A check of the tags showed they had gone from Portland to Cleveland to D.C. to Baltimore across two days.

The clerks in Baltimore said only certain airports had luggage scanning capabilities, so there is no way to completely track a bag. Because my bag was not scanned in Baltimore, neither customer service nor the baggage handlers in Baltimore would have had a way to tell if my bag was actually there.

That's the biggest problem I have. Shit happens, bags get lost. I get that. But I don't understand how the airlines don't have a reliable system in place, how airline employees don't understand the capabilities of the system and how the crackdown on carry-on items in the name of "security" is supposed to help this process. [/rant]

 

For the life of me I don't know why so many people want to lug their steamer trunks on and off planes when they could just check and let someone else do the work.

I like to relax at Airport and not worry about a bunch of bags. If they are lost their lost. If lost on return I view as bonus since Airline has to deliver bag to my house and I don't have to lug.

If taking a regional jet sometimes I will "gate check" my garment bag which is pretty fool proof. You get check and put on cart as you get on plane. When you get off it's there waiting for you.

When I go skiing I always carry my boots on. You can always rent skis lost but boots are harder to come by.

On longer trips I've taken to boxing up dirty cloths and sending back fed ex so I don't have to deal with .

Shoes are always the dilema if you run. If forces you into at least 3 pairs of shoes and possibly 4.