Chapter 21: Epilogue, Part Four: RIP CR2032
Make a Checklist
06.10.2023 - 06.10.2023 75 °F
"Optimism or Pessimism?"
Friday, October 6, 2023
Free Advice: When preparing to travel overseas, make a checklist. Here is a sample:
1. Passport
2. Air Tags
3. Spare CR2032 Batteries for your Air Tags
4. Inventory of everything you pack
in 1959, The Kingston Trio recorded the folksong: "MTA"
Paraphrased for 2023, it goes like this:
… Well did it ever return?
No it never returned
And its fate is still unlearned (what a pity)
It may ride forever
'Neath the streets of Bang'lore
It's the bag, that never returned
My pessimism is premature. But, with the Air Tag CR2032 battery now surely dead--the last message sent was 40 hours ago--I no longer have the upper hand with BA by virtue of knowing more about the whereabouts of our bag than they do. Today's British Airways flight from Bangalore to Heathrow landed hours and hours ago and there is no word. Of course, there is no possible way that I expected that they could--or would--figure out if the bag had been loaded on that flight and made it's way back to London and then reached out with a reassuring update.
But still...
My task today was to prepare an accurate inventory of everything that is inside our runaway case to provide to our Airline Overlord.
A bit of research reveals that historically British Airways is second worst in the world (Wow Air, an Icelandic low-cost carrier is "first worst") when it comes to lost luggage. "The Telegraph (a British broadsheet newspaper) reported in 2009 that British Airways lost 15.6 bags per 1,000 passengers which is extremely high compared to some of the others on this list." That, it seems, is an improvement, however. In 2007, the lost 38 bags per 1,000 customers. For comparison purposes, note that American Airlines, in June of 2022, mishandled 9.3 bags per 1,000 passengers. The global average for mishandled bags in 2020 was much lower: 3.5 per 1,000.
I don't have a statistic for "We don't give a damn about your lost bag," complaints. For us, however, that rate is 1 out of 1.
When it comes to the airports themselves, London Heathrow misdelievers 49.68 percent of mishandled baggage cases reported in the U.K. In fairness, that's only logical as it is the largest airport in the U.K. That is where our bag went missing.
We are not alone. The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that, in the United States, 219,000 bags were lost, damaged, delayed or stolen in April of this year. Since returning to the skies after the pandemic, the government reports that there has been a 60% increase in mishandled baggage. Once mostly a free part of flying, checking baggage is now often a fee based service; according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, airlines earned more than $6.7 billion in baggage revenue last year. Proper handling of checked luggage is a massive profit center. Mishandling of baggage--whatever the cost of that is--must be a pittance compared to revenue.
Looking on the bright side, the situation could be worse. Here is a shot of mishandled baggage at Heathrow on June 18 of 2022.
One wonders what to do if you spotted your bag out in the middle of that gaggle, er, baggle. How could you even get to it? Once you did get to it, how could you get it out of that mess?
Pictures like these also offer up a word to the wise. Don't buy a black suitcase.
Ours is olive green. That's better than black but I'm thinking that the best suitcase might be zebra striped. Or rainbow colored. What if you could attach a helium balloon that would eject from a compartment on the bag when you pushed a button on your iPhone? How about a built in siren like the system on your car when you push the panic button on your key fob. Or maybe an odor emitter which produced a fragrance so noxious that someone would be forced to deal with it. Or, maybe a pre-recorded announcement from a speaker that would repeat, over and over again, "HELP! I'm Paul Russell's suitcase. I've fallen and I can't get up." Or some other message of my choice. This idea is edgy but maybe a smoke or fog generator that would send up a visible cloud...
What do we think is going to happen? We believe that our BA419982 will eventually show up, contents intact, on our doorstep. My name is firmly affixed to the body of the bag--not on a tag that could be ripped off. My business card is tucked inside the bag. Unless somebody did actually steal it, it will surface.
In the meantime, I replaced the old CR2032 batteries in our other three AirTags this morning with fresh, shiny, new batteries. That's a day late and a dollar short but it is the only productive thing I can think of.
We won't have another situation where we will need to check a bag until June of 2024. I have already booked our flight--a non-stop so the bag cannot go missing at a connecting airport.
