CHECKED BAGS: WHOSE L IA B LIT Y?

When attending a dinner at a banquet, you entrust your coat to an attendant at the cloakroom. You are given a ticket and you cannot expect to get your coat back unless you provide the ticket. This is to ensure no-one else can walk off with your coat. Why does the same not apply for our checked bags, which are worth far more?

We check our bags in at our originating airport, and receive a ticket with a barcode and identifier. Yet when we arrive at our destination airport, airlines allow anyone to help themselves at the baggage carousel, and to walk off with our luggage. There is no obligation on passengers to provide proof of ownership with a ticket, or via a scan at a barrier to prove the correct bag has been taken.

As a regular traveller, my suitcase has gone astray from time to time. Sometimes it has been because a fellow passenger has taken my bag from the carousel in error, a frustrating and avoidable accident for both of us. Any system that could prevent such errors would, of course, also stop passenger bags being stolen in the same manner.

In my opinion, to invite anyone at the carousel to freely take suitcases that have been entrusted to the airline and the airport baggage system is reckless, negligent and irresponsible.

I would ask all travellers to demand that our airlines take responsibility, and to ensure our suitcases/personal belongings are guarded at all times while in the care of airlines – from the moment we check in, until our luggage is returned to us at our destination.

Please join me in a campaign for change. Samuel Halpern, Manchester