In mid-May, I went to the Czech Republic for a week to perform a site survey of this new radar site the US is installing there. Three days in the field, and three days of the group working in a conference room to establish conceptual lay down of the site. It promised to be hard but enjoyable work. For the field work, I brought my jeans, heavy boots, jacket, baseball caps because I knew we would be stomping around in the woods.
But Lufthansa had other plans. My bag didn't find me until I tore up the street clothes that I wore on the plane, and ruined my street shoes. After the second day of this, I decided to go out and buy some clothes on the Czech economy. My hotel concierge directed me to a shopping center, and with thirty minutes before closing I ran from store to store, trying to find some basic jeans, shirts, hat and a rain jacket. I finally found an outdoors shop that sold camping and hiking apparel, and bought the only things they had that would fit me (okay, I'm a little --- okay, a lot – out of shape). I would NEVER be seen in this stuff in the ‘States, but necessity is a mother. ..er, the mother of invention. The semi-funny thing about this was I knew I had four plane changes on the trip and before I left had told everyone I was going to lose my bag. I just knew it.
In the meantime, Lufthansa claimed they looked for the bag but could not find it. Three days into the trip, the bag showed up. It was almost like Christmas. “I wonder what’s in this!”
I could reasonably see the bag never showing up. I don’t mind the little stuff, but my “brain”/Yuppie book/secretary, whatever you want to call it, was in that bag, along with personal information on me, my work, and my family. I’ve had that book since I worked at Defense Nuclear Agency in 1986, and have used it on various jobs ever since. It’s part of me. I can sort of replace it – that particular model isn’t offered any more – but not the information in it. Things like the twelve different passwords to the various systems I use at work. The names and telephone numbers of people I have needed only once, and now I know I will need again without remembering their names, etc., resulting in hours of wasted time. I would have had it in my carry-on, but I had to make a choice. More about that later.
This has happened so frequently in airline travel that I actually plan for it. I rarely check a bag. I will re-wash the same clothes several times in a hotel sink to avoid checking a bag. In this case, I had the boots and books of reference materials I had to carry, so checking a bag was a necessity. And when I do check a bag, I always carry at least one, usually two, spare pair of shorts, clean shirt, socks, and my toiletries in a carry-on bag. I did not use my usual roll-cart carry-on, but opted for a smaller backpack because I had so much stuff in my checked bag. Thus, there was no room in my carry on for my “brain”.
I reported the missing bag to Lufthansa, who responded with the inevitable, “We apologize for any inconvenience.” Damn, I hate that cliché. Generally when I travel, I’m not going to grandma’s house where, if Fly By Night Airline loses my bag, I’m just out the time and trouble of going to WalMart and replacing some trousers and socks. I fly on business. One time the airline lost my bag, I was going to Albuquerque to brief a brigadier general on a program I was working. Instead of the crisp, Class A military uniform that he was used to expecting, there was this captain in jeans and a golf shirt, because that’s all I had. “Inconvenience?” This is my career you’re stomping on. Only the fact that a similar thing had happened to him prevented him from throwing the upstart captain out of his office.
The airlines lose 6 out of every 1000 bags they check. For the public school graduates out there, that’s .06 percent. That doesn’t sound too bad, until you think about it. Would you eat a product that .06 percent of everybody that ate it died? We’ve been flying jumbo jets for almost 40 years, yet there has not been a major improvement in luggage handling in that time.
The only thing that is going to fix the problem is for the airlines to pay not only the replacement cost of lost items (they only pay a depreciated value for the luggage and the items the passenger can prove he had in the bag – and the airlines decide what they will pay; there is no independent assessment short of taking them to court) but a hefty fine to the passenger. Until there is a financial incentive, there is no reason for the airlines to correct this mismanagement.
