Unreliable luggage, goes away on its own. this week too, heathrow, Britain’s main airport, complained that “bags were not carried with passengers”. And how can you tell the difference between the bags when so many are black, complained a Frankfurt air terminal boss a few days earlier.

Passengers have the right to blame airports and airlines for lost bags. They struggle to cope with the recovery of a major skylift; However, Sita, an aviation technology company, said airport baggage theft was 17 percent higher in July than in the same month in 2019, before the pandemic crisis.

Airline ground handling agents are often the first point of contact for your baggage journey. At Heathrow they are now a third less compared to pre-pandemic levels. That’s one of the reasons British Airways extended short-haul ticket sales limits from Heathrow, even as the airport’s adjusted losses shrunk to £321m in half.

On average, only 0.4 percent of bags were delayed or misplaced at airports. The failed ‘baggage connection’ rate at Heathrow is almost twice as high.

Last month, US budget airline Delta organized a rescue mission for 1,000 suitcases that had stranded at Heathrow. His Detroit-bound Airbus A330-200 carried only luggage and nothing else.

If you’re rushing through airport transit worrying that baggage handlers don’t have a sense of urgency, your fears are justified. According to Sita, transfer errors caused two-fifths of baggage delays. The chaos at the airport in Newark, in the state of New Jersey, can keep your bags going to Phoenix even if you’re traveling to San Diego.

One-fifth of baggage delays are caused by baggage handlers alone failing to place the baggage on board. The same proportion was due to errors in ticket and security checks.

Peter Drummond, baggage handler Sita, points out that the world “behind a black curtain” is full of logistical complexities; however, with greater digitization of baggage handling, bag loss is reduced, according to the company.

Some iPhone users pack Apple’s cheap AirTag GPS finder in their trunk. That’s the English way Elliot Sharod tracked down a suitcase that was lost during an Irish airline Aer Lingus flight from South Africa via Germany. The suitcase was in Pimlico, London.

A mystery remains for Lex, a frequent traveler with the grueling experience of losing luggage. The shock of waiting for a lost suitcase in the empty luggage room was compounded by watching the sole unclaimed baggage spun endlessly on the carousel. It always looks bright pink. Why?