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Comment by chungleong | Hacker News Reader

Which might be close to the theoretical limit. The probability of two suitcases on a given flight having the same appearance must be close to 99%.

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> Nearly half of all bags that go astray do so because of problems with flight transfers, Sita says. Delayed flights have knock-on effects - your bag just doesn't make it to the connecting flight in time.

> And a significant proportion of missing bags are down to passengers or handlers simply picking up the wrong one.

The former does seem like a hard problem without restricting people's ability to switch flights or delaying flights further to allow for luggage transfers.

I wonder if there is any room to improve the latter on the airline's part by adding visual variations to the tag without impeding the function. Like randomly assigning colors and giant emoji to be printed prominently on the tag, so that it is easier to distinguish at a glance whether it is really your bag.

(I mean, you should already be checking your name tag when you collect your bag, and people already add their own flair to their bags, but obviously not everyone is.)

A few airports have bag checks at exit, where they validate the tag against your chit. This is surprisingly rare though.

You can also tilt the odds in your favor by choosing an unusual bag color/design though: nobody's going to mistakenly pick up my lovely lime green number.

Or simply customize it at no cost.

I've just put some large stickers at the bottom of my bag (normally invisible, but in plain sight when on the conveyor belt).

Honestly I didn't have any such problems in mind; did it mostly for my own convenience - to avoid the usual "erm, is it mine?" hesitation.

That's exactly what I (and many others, including my old parents) do. It really helps when you're waiting for your case, particularly for those big conveyor belts with tons of people.

I do wonder whether the rare fellow traveler with a similar bag would be less likely to verify the tag when pulling it off the carousel than those with the standard black bag.

I like the random color/giant emoji idea. The major downside I see is space on the tag and all the current printers are black and white so they all need to be replaced for this to be effective.

I wouldn't be so sure of this. Usually when you go to a luggage shop here they only carry one of each models and refill them every now and then.

This is basically a reformulation of the Birthday Paradox. Even with a large variety of makes and models of luggage (cf. 365+ days in a year), the chances of any two being the same increases superlinearly wrt passengers.

That's what I had in mind. I figure on average half the passengers on any given flight are returning home. People living in the same area tend to have the same retail choices. The number of variations among this group probably isn't in the hundreds.

My point is that the variety of luggage is so vast (i'd hazard tens of thousands of models) that the probability would be low even for a quite high number of passengers.

So if limited choice of suitcase colour available, get a can of spray paint and customise it so you can easily spot it - and others won't accidentally mistake it for their own ...

Appearance doesn't cause airlines to lose bags.

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