Late connection delayed bag, but airline was ready
By Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published December 17, 2007 at 12:30 a.m.
Molly McIntyre had a sinking feeling when she put her bag down at the Delta drop-off point in Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport that she might not see it when she arrived at the baggage carousel in Denver.
The 20-year-old Boulder student who is spending a year studying in Leeds, England, had made a dash from customs after arriving from Manchester to meet her connecting flight to Denver International Airport.
She was pushing the envelope on what is the most common cause of mishandled baggage at airports - the late connection.
Of the sharp rise in lost, misplaced or damaged luggage in the past five years, the major contributor is the missed connection. When the arriving flight gets in late, there is even less time to ensure all the connecting bags are divvied up to the proper departing planes.
Fortunately, it doesn't have to be bad. Unlike the rare horror story of a sliced-up suitcase or a duffel sent to Dusseldorf, bags that miss their connecting flights are just like people who miss them - they are most often put on the next flight out.
Some are ready with the information before you know you even have a problem.
On a recent night, McIntyre and her father watched as the flood of luggage spilling onto Carousel 4 at DIA slowed to a trickle and then shut off.
They then joined a handful of other passengers - most of them finishing long days that began with departures in Europe - walking to Delta's small baggage office next to the carousel.
"It was kind of an interesting experience," Mark McIntyre said. "This really nice lady at the Delta counter said, 'May I help you?' And when we said our names, she said, 'Oh, Molly McIntyre, I have you on the list and I know you missed your bag.' "
The Delta worker, Jana Horak, had a computer printout of names of passengers on the flight whose bags had been left behind. Computerization of the process means the list was generated even before Molly's flight had left the ground in Georgia.
"She was totally organized about it," McIntrye said. "There was a really irritated guy in there who was on the same flight, and they had left his bag and he harrumphed around, but for us it was the best lost baggage experience we'd ever had."
Even though the late bags were already in the air and would arrive within two hours, the McIntyres took up Horak's offer to have Delta deliver the bag to their house in the morning, as did several others.
Not so Andrea Suchomlinova, who lives in Kosice, Slovakia, and was headed to Aspen. Her flight from Prague to Atlanta had arrived late and caused her bag to be left behind.
"I'll wait, of course," she said. "I need my pajamas!"
Mike Schaffner, of Spring, Texas, who recently had a bag left behind while passing through DIA on a connection, said airlines ought to be using the technology they have to improve customer service. He wrote about it on his blog, "Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms."
Since they already know the names of the people whose bags were left behind, airlines shouldn't make those folks stand fruitlessly at the carousel for a half-hour waiting in vain.
Instead, Schaffner said, they should be greeted or their names displayed on a message board directing them to the baggage office.
"If you know a bag didn't make the connection, why do you insist on adding to my frustration by making me wait an extra 30 or 45 minutes, and then make me come ask you about it?" he said.
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