The more I read and hear about luggage handling (this article, lost luggage last summer, cbikes are often damaged in planes...), and after unsatisfying experiences (waiting for hours to check in or to claim bags), I'm more willing to take the train than the plane !<p>In Europe, you show up into a train station, handle your bikes or precious bag yourself, get in your train, and step out to leave the station immediately.<p>To anyone in the airline industry : the bad user experience with bags doesn't encourage me to carry bags in the cabin. It makes me get buses or trains whenever I have stuff with me.<p>This should be a reminder that _users_ know best, not management. They have _needs_ not because they're picky, and won't adapt to your service. They will get an service to match their needs.<p>I feel like airlines don't want you to check in bags because they say it's premium, and _good_ passengers don't need them. Well, if your feature is 'premium', you don't develop it it to offer a satisfying user experience.<p>Bags should be on the MVP. You want bags and to get them bag, not just money.
Or users move on to others company products.
Based on the article, it looks like this is what happened:<p>1) Couple arrived with no bags.<p>2) Couple put in "lost bag" notice with Air Canada.<p>3) Air Canada didn't find the bag within 30 days and paid compensation (per law).<p>4) Couple deposited compensation.<p>5) The bag (along with others) in a big pile was donated to charity.<p>The status of the bag is iffy once compensation is paid.<p>IANAL, but I think its like the cases where a car is stole,
insurance pays out, and then the car is recovered. You don't own that car in that case.
AirTags and police are worthless. I had an AT on AirPods that dropped in my apt garage. I could see them move into a secured area that Google leased. Called the cops’ non-emergency number. “Sorry, we have a 2 day backlog” Then, I watched them leave the area, go on a highway, and arrive at a house in a residential area. The police there refused to do anything until the other police did something. It doesn’t matter if you know where your property is, people are allowed to steal it and get away with it.
The airline lost the bag. The customers entrusted it to them, and it's pretty clear the fault lies somewhere on the airline's side.<p>Devil's advocate: The airline doesn't have access to the tracking data that the customer did. It's one of hundreds of bags they can't find owners for. Donating them doesn't seem like too bad of an option, provided they still make the customer whole.
I'm surprised that Apple doesn't provide a commercial service for organisations such as airlines to scan baggage for AirTags.<p>This strikes me as something cheap to implement that would help everyone involved.
AirTags have to be every airline's worth nightmare. When they were first announced, my first thought was "I'm going to put one in my luggage!". It has suddenly become impossible for them to pretend they don't know where your bags are. They've lost all plausible deniability, making them look that much worse when something crappy like this happens.<p>While I personally have never had a bad luggage experience, I've heard countless horror stories. Being able to watch my bag move around the airport and eventually board my plane provides a lot of peace of mind.
The bags have ID tags that should be in the Air Canada data system, they find the bags, read the tags and find out who they belong to.<p>Is the fact that the data was corrupted, or there was a software issue that this couldn't match up.<p>Or are the bags just listed as being on a flight, and routed to the collection carousel.<p>Or is a case of the manager at the bag handling facility was under staffed, and overwhelmed by this all and just tried to be rid of the problem?
After a long conversation I had at a music festival with a guy who works luggage at the local international airport I'm frankly blown away any bags ever make it to their destination.<p>I know we all concentrate on the failures in the system like this but the logistics involved in getting bags off a plane then delivered to dozens of different connecting flights while the same thing happens on dozens of other planes as well as adhoc "checked at the gate" bags getting added in with everything being correctly sorted, grouped, and transported 99% of the time, often with less than an hour to do it, is kind of amazing.
It seems super messed up that they would donate your bag and all its sometimes extremely personal contents instead of disposing of it properly. What if I had a hard drive full of sensitive documents? Or my bitcoin wallet? Or a diary of my deepest thoughts? I've worked closely with Goodwill and I know it's very common for people who handle bulk donations like this to skim a bit when they find good stuff. I don't blame them, but it's irresponsible to have lost bags go to donation by default.
For US domestic travelers, check a firearm and see how much more attention is paid to your luggage. Some airports will have someone come out at baggage claim with your bag/firearm case and check your ID before handing it over.
I didn't read tfa but for long unclaimed bags this has been SOP forever.<p>Once the bags are recorded with baggage service and they've been in the federated database for so long, if the owners do not claim, the contents are donated where appropriate.<p>The bags themselves sometimes are set aside as ad hoc replacements for anyone who has a bag badly damaged in handling or other mishap.
Personal, painful anecdote without catharsis:<p>Young and naive with airline travel, my wife lost her childhood bear when the airline lost our luggage, and we arrived in another country with nothing. Decades on and long divorced, I still get multiple punches in the gut and attacks of tears when I'm reminded of her broken-hearted lament.
Unfortunately bagages losses are regulated - in europe - so compensation amounts are already limited (few 100, at best it compensate your suitcase). You need to take insurance and make a video before you pack as proof if you want a solution. Other than this you should assume all the time you luggage is lost.
Metacomplaint: that site inexplicably suppresses scrolling by pressing the space bar. After reading a couple of screenfulls I gave up.<p>Why do they publish something and then put up a barrier to reading it?
We covered this a while ago on the #osspodcast <a href="https://opensourcesecurity.io/2022/10/30/episode-347-airtags-in-luggage-and-weasel-security-two-peas-in-a-suitcase/" rel="nofollow">https://opensourcesecurity.io/2022/10/30/episode-347-airtags...</a> TL;DR: Airlines hate being held accountable.