Expensive travel luggage has to be one of the biggest wastes of money. The only thing worse than losing your luggage is when the bag that helds all your belongings was also valuable. Coming from the
Caribbean, lost luggage in transit is a way of life. One of the main inter Caribbean airlines is LIAT, known to locals as Luggage In Another Terminal.
Most passengers who spend money on their travel bags do so to show off, and to make people think that they are well-to-do and successful. But there could be one good reason for getting the new Tumi range of pricey travel bags. They come in a hard to miss range of exotic colours. That means that if your luggage does get lost you can at least say that it is distinctive and easy-to-spot.
One luggage thief was recently apprehended in America with over one thousand travel bags stacked up in his garage. This news came at around the same time that airlines in the
United States had vowed to get tougher on baggage security. You only have to walk into any baggage reclaim area of any airport in the US to know that stealing bags would be a piece of cake. Even if you were to get caught you can just play the old, sorry, 'I thought it was my bag' routine.
Most of the thieves are not so brazen though. They don't try to steal the whole bag, but just a few choice items out of it on the way. Airport staff who are on low wages and dissatisfied with their jobs can remove an expensive camera from your bag easily without getting caught. The only way to stop them is to make sure that you keep your most valuable items in your hand luggage. Even then it is important to keep a good eye on them.
Lost travel luggage is a problem which is on the increase around the world. While a few years ago there were a recorded 30 million bags lost, that figure has now shot up to 40 million bags. The best ways to avoid your bag getting lost are to arrive early for check in, make sure that your bag has the right handling instructions on it and place some ID on the inside and the outside of the bag.
The airlines say that most bags are reunited with their owners (eventually) and that only one in 200,000 bags is never found. One way to get bargain travel luggage could be to go to Scottsdale in Alabama where the major American lost luggage depot is located.
Most of these bags are never reunited with their owners and instead re-homed thanks to a cut-price fire sale. If they can't reunite the bag within 90 days or sell it then it gets given away. And then the whole cycle starts again the next time the bag is used.