Travel: why airports lose your luggage

Luggage cannot be trusted. It wanders off on its own. Only this week, Heathrow, the UK’s shambolic main airport, complained about “bags not travelling with passengers”. And how is anyone supposed to tell suitcases apart when so many of them are black, griped a Frankfurt Airport boss a few days earlier.

Passengers correctly blame lost bags on airports and airlines. They are struggling to cope with a sharp recovery in air travel. Sita, an aviation IT business, says luggage snafus in airports were 17 per cent higher in July than in the same month of 2019.

Airline ground handlers are often the first point of contact for bag routing. They are a third fewer at Heathrow compared with pre-pandemic levels. That is one reason British Airways extended a cap on short-haul ticket sales from Heathrow, even as the airport’s adjusted losses narrowed to £321mn for the half year.

On average, only 0.4 per cent of bags are delayed or mislaid at airports. Heathrow’s reported level of failed “baggage connections” is around double that.

Last month, low-cost US airline Delta mounted a rescue mission for 1,000 American suitcases stranded at Heathrow. Its Airbus A330-200 to Detroit carried luggage and nothing else.

If you race across a stopover airport worrying that baggage handlers lack your sense of urgency, your fears are justified. Bungled transfers account for two-fifths of luggage delays, according to Sita. Chaos at Newark airport may ensure that your suitcase goes to Phoenix even though you are headed for San Diego.

One-fifth of baggage delays are simply the result of baggage handlers failing to put cases on aircraft. The same proportion comes down to ticketing mistakes and security inspections.

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Peter Drummond, Sita’s head of baggage, points out that the world “behind the black curtain” is fraught with logistical complexity. But greater digitisation of baggage handling is reducing lost luggage, according to Sita.

Some iPhone users pop cheap Apple AirTag GPS locators into their luggage. That was how Briton Elliot Sharod located a suitcase that went missing during an Aer Lingus flight from South Africa via Germany. The bag was in Pimlico, London.

One mystery remains for Lex, a regular flyer with weary experience of lost luggage. The poignancy of waiting for a mislaid bag in an empty baggage hall is deepened by watching a lonely, unclaimed suitcase rotating endlessly on the carousel. It always seems to be bright pink. Why?

The Lex team is interested in hearing more from readers. If you have had instructive experiences with lost luggage, please share them in the comments section below.