“We have to travel now thinking that our baggage is going to get lost”

Orphaned luggage at Heathrow (WSJ photo)

In yesterday's post on the decision to drive, not fly, the 840 miles to Seattle one factor I did consider but failed to mention was that air travel is experiencing a raft of problems due to short-staffing. Foremost is the headache of lost luggage.

Every bag in that ocean of unclaimed luggage we’re seeing on airport floors has a story behind it.

To hear those stories is to understand just how maddening travel has become for many in 2022. Travelers say calls, emails, chats and tweets to airlines about lost bags frequently go unanswered by short-staffed airlines and airports. They hear conflicting information—or nothing—about the bag’s whereabouts.

Efforts to find and retrieve their bags, even when devices like AirTags pinpoint the location, are eating up hours and sometimes days of vacation time. And that doesn’t count the daily shopping trips for clothes until (or if) the bag shows up.

...Yvonne Heerema, senior luxury travel adviser at the Shameless Tourist travel agency, spent the first two days of a June trip to London stressed about three bags that didn’t show up with her family on a United flight from Newark, N.J. (United said it works hard to reunite costumers with lost bags “as quickly as possible.”) Now she warns clients with coming trips to prepare for that possibility. Her tips include packing one suitcase that has a few of each passengers’ items in it and buying AirTags.

“We have to travel now thinking that our baggage is going to get lost,” says Ms. Heerema, who is based in Austin, Texas.

A family member was stuck in a Southern California airport for eight hours while a substitute plane was "on the way." Eventually the U.S. major carrier put him up at a hotel and didn't lose his luggage, so he was one of the lucky ones.

Where was he going? To SFO, 400 miles away. He should have driven.