Lost luggage
Lost luggage is the phenomenon in which a public carrier, airline, ship, or train does not send a passenger's luggage to the correct destination to arrive with the passenger. In the United States, an average of 1 of 150 people have their checked baggage misdirected or left behind each year.
Lost or misdirected luggage becomes more common the more elaborate a flight plan is. International flights, or flights with connections are far more likely to see luggage get lost. There are many causes of lost luggage. If a passenger arrives late for a flight, their luggage will sometimes not have enough time to be loaded on the plane. If tags are accidentally torn off airport workers may not know where to send the luggage. Human error is also common as tags are misread or luggage is placed in the wrong location. Sometimes there is no room in the plane or weight problems. Security delays can also cause bags to arrive on a later flight than their owner. Customs processing is normally handled after luggage is picked up.
Most lost luggage is quickly sent by the airline to the correct destination. For the inconvenience airlines will often reimburse passengers for toiletries, clothing, and other essentials if the arrival airport is away from the passenger's home area. In most cases, upon the arrival of delayed luggage, a courier service will deliver it from the arrival airport to the passenger at his or her home or hotel. Delivery charges are paid by the airline except in rare cases.
On some occasions luggage is completely lost and cannot be recovered. The airline will then normally compensate the owner. The passengers must then list the contents of their baggage and file a claim. Most airlines maintain stores where they sell the contents of lost or abandoned luggage. If a bag is never recovered it is usually because it has been stolen or mistaken by another passenger or stolen by an airport employee.
To deal with lost luggage travelers are advised to carry all essentials in a carry-on bag, including a change of clothes and anything they would be greatly troubled to lose because of monetary or emotional value.
Bags can also be damaged during travel, but most damage (such as broken wheels and handles) is not covered under the airlines' contract of carriage. Some airlines, however, will still repair such damage as a good-faith gesture to the customer, or offer a discount voucher for a future flight. In general airlines regard the purpose of luggage to be the protection of its contents during transit. If the luggage is damaged, even severely, but the contents remain unharmed then airlines regard the luggage as having fulfilled its purpose and will not compensate owners.
The majority of unclaimed baggage in the United States, whether by being lost or misdirected, or simply forgotten by travelers, is handled by the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama, which has contracts with most major airlines. The luggage sent to UBC is eventually resold for a profit.
Passenger-baggage reconciliation
According to the rules of most air transportation authorities, such as the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and European Union's Joint Aviation Authorities, should passengers flying internationally with checked baggage fail to arrive at the departure gate before the flight is closed, that person's baggage must be retrieved from the aircraft hold before the flight is permitted to take off. In the United States this does not apply to domestic flights since all bags are required to go through bomb detection machines prior to being loaded. Making sure passengers board flights onto which they have checked baggage is called "passenger-baggage reconciliation" and is accomplished automatically through various commercially available systems. The security presumption of passenger-baggage reconciliation is that bombers will not want to kill themselves, and will not board an aircraft if they have caused a bomb to be placed in its hold. This presumption does not hold true of suicide bombers.
Unaccompanied suitcases led to the downing of two flights, when a bomb inside the suitcase exploded:
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