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Comment by astura | Hacker News Reader

TFA says airlines are mostly really good at getting bags to their owner - only .01% of bags become unclaimed.

It's been an embarrassingly long time since my undergraduate statistics class, so the math might not be 100% correct, but I'd like to attempt it anyway, be sure to tell me if I'm wrong:

Worst case, you fly twice a month for 20 years, that's 480 flights. Each flight is a round trip, so baggage is entered into the airlines systems 960 times in 20 years.

If the probability that an airline gets your baggage to you each time is 99.99%

.9999^960 = .9085

1-.9085 = .0915

So, if my calculations are correct, in 20 years time, there's a 9.15% of chance your bags having be lost at least once. Assuming that the odds of an airline losing all bags are the same - and they are obviously not.

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I suspect that the (vast?) majority of people who travel that much don't check luggage regularly. The exception being people who need a lot of gear for whatever purpose they're on the road for all the time. Personally, I'm on dozens of flights a year and I only check luggage for a handful of those flights.

Anecdotally, luggage does miss connections on a fairly regular basis and if there are airline changes/international flights involved, it may take a few days to track a bag down. But I've never had a bag lost permanently and I can't remember the last time I've heard someone I know complaining about that happening. I think my parents in all their years of travel may have lost a bag permanently once.

ADDED: The statistic in the article doesn't really say what percentage of luggage is lost though. The quote is “Less than one-half percent of bags are ultimately unclaimed." So this is the case where they have the luggage but can't figure out who the owner is for whatever reason. Presumably other bags are just lost--probably most typically stolen.

The only luggage I've lost (temporarily!) has been carry-on which ended up being gate checked. It was explained that during handling the gate check tag came off.

TFA was solely about luggage that was permanently lost, not temporarily.

I was answering the GP's question if they are just lucky or if they can expect lost luggage with 20 years of regular travel. The answer is: the odds are highly in your favor of not having an airline lose your bags, even after 20 years of regularly entrusting your bags to the airline.

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