The airlines' bag reflex

A dime's differential
Samuel Ingalls, McCarran's assistant director of aviation and information systems, explained that bar codes on optical-scan tags can be easily compromised by everything from a loose printer head to a dirty scanner lens. "From the time someone prints out an optical scan tag, the accuracy starts to degrade," said Ingalls. "RFID doesn't care whether it has a coat of dust on it or not." But universally implementing an RFID system would come at a cost. "Bag tags cost less than a penny to make," said Mayer, "but RFID tags cost upwards of 10 cents each."

Yet the expense might buy long-term savings. Eric Wong, HKIA's general terminal manager, estimated that RFID tags would save the airport roughly $3.8 million by the end of the year, both by dramatically cutting the labor costs of towing mishandled luggage and by increasing the amount of baggage its terminals could handle. McCarran's Ingalls also believed cost analysis favored the tags. "It costs $95 or so to reunite a bag with a customer," he said. "In many cases, particularly with short-haul flights, that may be more than the customer paid for a ticket. The economics scale up pretty rapidly."

But updating technology isn't the only way to limit missing bags. Airlines like Airtran Airways and Hawaiian Airlines — which both have consistently low rates of mishandled bags — also employ such low-tech solutions as daily check-in calls to airports, large-print luggage tags to help agents more easily spot errant bags, and pizza parties to motivate front-line workers. Some of the airlines with the lowest rates of mishandled bags attribute their success to the human touch and simple organizational focus. "Everybody has the technology available to them," said Jack Smith, vice-president of customer service for AirTran. But he says other airlines may not put a premium on eliminating baggage mishandling: "Quite frankly, it's a lack of discipline."

A little courtesy
Blaine Miyasato, Hawaiian's vice-president of customer services, concedes that for larger airlines, baggage problems can seem difficult to conquer. "It can be formidable. It may well be that when you're dealing with hundreds of stations in hundreds of cities, there isn't that focus." Hawaiian Airlines operates about 175 flights a day to fewer than 20 destinations.

When a bag does go astray, some airlines and airports have tools to keep the situation from turning nightmarish. Airtran uses a computer system that allows customers to trace the progress of their mishandled bags online, and the airline measures how long passengers wait to receive their bags. And Hawaiian takes the unusual step of FedExing some passengers' bags to speed their return.

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But some bags are never found. Julie Roberts, a consultant from New Jersey, landed without her checked bags after a flight to San Francisco on JetBlue Airways. About a week later, she was informed by the airline that it did not expect to find her luggage. Along with her bags and other things, Julie lost a cherished bracelet her husband had given her on their wedding day, and crucial — and expensive — allergy medication for which her insurance won't cover a new prescription. Of course, in addition to the expense of trying to locate her bags, the airline is liable for up to $3,000 for having lost them.

An unexpected solution
The vast majority of mishandled bags is eventually returned to their owners, and only 0.08 percent are lost for good, according to SITA. But the belongings of those few unlucky travelers often wind up in the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Ala., a clearing house that pays airports for baggage that cannot be returned to the owner. "We're a side note to what happens," said Brenda Cantrell, the store's spokeswoman, explaining that airlines typically search bags for five days for clues to the owner's identity, then stow them in a warehouse for several months until her store carts them away. She compares sifting through the store's treasures to shopping at a thrift store or a yard sale. Except, she adds, "these were things people wanted with them, not something they discarded."

Adding insult to injury, in some people's eyes at least, United Airlines announced in June that it would initiate a policy of charging passengers between $10 and $30 to check bags — a move soon imitated by virtually every major U.S. carrier. Ironically, the fees may actually spare airlines and passengers from having to sing the lost luggage blues quite so frequently. If passengers check fewer bags, the odds of an airline losing some goes down. Moreover, the need for airlines to invest in expensive tracking technology becomes much less urgent. "They have so many competing priorities for a budget," said Catherine Mayer, vice-president of airport services for SITA. "I don't know where baggage sits."

Apparently, all too often, neither do the airlines.

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