Top Ten Ways to Avoid Losing Your Luggage When Travelling
Each plane ride that you take requires that you do several things: buy a ticket, check in your luggage, and go through security. However, in this process, the luggage you hand off to the airline can become misplaced or even lost, causing problems at your destination. While you can’t prevent lost luggage entirely, there are ways to limit its occurrence.
1. Know your airline - There are ways to check the percentage of lost luggage from an airline by scouring online forums about travel. You can also look at travel review sites to get recommendations as well.
2. Get to the airport on time - When you make the airlines rush to get your bags onto the plane, you can make it much easier for your bag to not quite make it. Follow the airlines rules for arriving at the airport on time.
3. Get a brightly coloured bag - It’s a lot harder for a bag to become misplaced in a luggage cart when it’s bright and easy to distinguish from the others. Nearly everyone’s bags are black, so try to make yours stand out.
4. Or you can add something to a black bag - Try adding a coloured ribbon or piece of masking tape to your bag to draw attention to it. This will also help when you’re standing at the baggage claim and trying to find your bag amongst the sea of black.
5. Use approved locks on your luggage - If the airline needs to cut your luggage lock apart in order to properly screen it, you might be increasing your chances of lost luggage. You can find these approved locks at a number of local retailers. The airlines have a master key to open them and then re-secure them.
6. Don’t leave anything valuable in your checked bags - Sad to say, but when you have a bag that is filled with expensive things, you might be setting yourself up for your bag to become ‘lost.’ Just recently in the news, baggage handlers had stolen a number of bags and then threw them out when they had been rifled through - don’t let that happen to you.
7. Make sure your bag is clean and presentable - Bags that seem to be falling apart or are in disrepair can signal to a baggage carrier that they might be something suspicious, thus delaying its arrival at your destination.
8. Keep a copy of your final destination in your checked bag - This will alert the baggage handlers as to where to send your bag once it is found.
9. Limit your stopovers - When you have several stops along the way on your trip, it increases the chances of lost luggage. Try to go non-stop if you can.
10. Don’t check any luggage - The easiest way to keep your luggage from becoming lost is to never let it out of your sight.
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Your #10 suggestion makes most sense. If you don’t check any luggage, you probably won’t lose any luggage. But this is not only about losing luggage, it’s about convenience - not having to stand in line waiting to check in, not having to wait at baggage claim. It’s also about being able to make all the connections, and find cheap connecting flights with low cost airlines that do not transfer luggage. http://blog.dohop.com/?p=61
Comment by Kristinn — November 29, 2007 @ 3:14 pm