Every day, thousands of passenger bags are mishandled by the airline industry and their owners want to be reunited with their bags quickly and expect their problems to be addressed as efficiently as possible, whether by airport authorities, ground handlers or airline representatives. To recover passenger loyalty at this difficult time it is crucial that resources work rapidly and in a flexible way, in order to meet passenger demands.

Similarly, from a safety perspective, one must be able to ensure that if a passenger has checked in on a flight and is not present in the aircraft when it is due to depart, it must be possible for airline industry to locate and offload their baggage as soon as possible in order to avoid departure delays. The Chicago Convention and other documents of Transport industry require airlines to recognise this “baggage-passengers” correlation.

Unfortunately, baggage does not always arrive at its intended destination. Or, if it does, it might turn up damaged or with something missing. When this happens, an airline is liable for the damage under the Montreal Convention. Last year 30 million bags were lost, costing the airlines $2.5bn (SITA Baggage Report 2006).
U.S. airlines last year lost about 10,000 bags a day on average, the worst performance since 1990.

The rate of lost suitcase reports per 1,000 passengers on flights soared 23% from a year earlier, according to recent numbers from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Among the reasons: a surge in the number of passengers, airline budget cuts, backed-up flights and tighter inspections of luggage.

In all, passengers filed with airlines more than 3.5 million reports of lost bags, most of which eventually find their way back to owners.

British Airways loses around 18 bags per 1,000 it handles and pays customers an average of £55 per lost piece of luggage, largely as a result of the sticker bar codes being damaged or misread in 2005. The airline believes it could save £400m by introducing the radio frequency technology, as the new tech could reduce its read error rate to nearly zero.

The number of bags lost or delayed by airlines continues to climb, with a daily average of 14,089 in August 2006, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics said.

It was the worst month for baggage-handling since the one-time meltdown in December 2004. Massive problems with airlines’ baggage handling over the holidays then were largely responsible for a spike in lost baggage reports — 9.11 per 1,000 passengers — and a number of flight cancellations.

For every 1,000 passengers in August 2006, 8.08 bags were reported lost or delayed, up from both July’s rate of 6.5 and the August 2005 rate of 6.4.

Trouble with checked bags was partly the result of a ban on liquids and gels in carryon luggage after an alleged plot to bomb U.S.-bound jetliners was foiled in Britain.

Passengers who normally carried their luggage began checking it to avoid having their toiletries confiscated by security screeners.

The increased number of bags being checked resulted in more mishandlings. The ban was lifted six weeks later after officials decided small amounts of liquids and gels could be carried aboard airplanes if they were put in a quart-size plastic bag.

But the trend is for more bags to be lost, stolen, mishandled or damaged. The number of mishandled bags was 23 percent higher in 2005 than in 2004.

On average, fewer than 1% of passengers officially file mishandled-baggage reports with major U.S. airlines, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. But that rate has been inching upward for the last three years.

Most customers separated from their bags get them back within a day, industry experts say, and only a small percentage lose them forever. Airlines typically spend at least 90 days trying to find the owners before salvaging their possessions.

Working for airline industry, I began to wonder: How does baggage go astray, and how often?

To find out, I worked my way backward through the process. After interviewing hundreds of passengers and getting some behind-the-scenes looks, I learned about the secret life of luggage, which wends its way through a system that mostly works. When it doesn't, it's not usually for the reasons you think.

Your bag's journey begins with an airline agent attaching a tag to it at the check-in counter. The tag contains a bar code that has a unique bag number plus other data that may identify you, the airport and the flight. This information is also printed on the tag. The bag then goes to the Transportation Security Administration station for screening.

Details of the process then begin to vary by airline and location. Typically, at big airports, the bag is placed on a network of conveyor belts. Built-in scanners use the tag's bar code to route the bag to the right loading pier.

Reading tags visually, ramp workers pile the bags onto tractors and drive them to the plane. (On bigger jets, bags may go into containers for loading.) On a nonstop flight, workers load bags aft to forward. On a connecting flight, they separate them into bins by stop.

A report, sent by computer to the flight's next destination, tells workers there how many bags to unload and which bins they're in. These bags then go to baggage claim or get routed onward. But sometimes the system doesn't work just right, resulting in what passengers call "lost luggage."

"Lost" is actually a misnomer, most of the time airline  knows where it is, It just isn't where it's supposed to be.