Does that actually happen to people still? I thought it was just a 90s meme. I get a push notification every time they move my bag anywhere. 'Accepted into the system', 'loaded onto the plane', 'unloaded off the plane', 'popped out at the carousel'. Seems pretty bullet proof these days.
2022 was an anomalous year since the airlines ramped up their schedules without having support staff at the airports to handle it. The statistics seem to indicate a tripling of lost luggage rates.
My math professor is flying once a month to Europe from the US for the past 20 years. He told me about this statistic he built from his trip history and I thought he was exaggerating.
On my 10th trans-Atlantic trip of course I lost my luggage.
At Heathrow, it'd mean 20,000+ people a day with lost luggage (if they all checked luggage). You'd need more than the entire taxi fleet of London to get their luggage to their hotels.
Really doesn't pass a common-sense check.
https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/pages/how-it-works
They say a 3 month search, but if you read around you’ll see 5+ days and your bag is basically gone. They say .03% of all checked bags end up lost and then unclaimed. How many must get lost to reach that unclaimed number?
https://newsrnd.com/business/2022-07-08-travel-chaos--5-000-...
Edit: improved source and removed misleading numbers from previous article
I was in Greece once dealing with lost luggage. The airline threw it on a ferry and told me to run on and look/grab my bag when it got to the island I was on. I guess that’s some effort lol
And, this time I had AirTags in my bags which ended up being super useful for tracking.