<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by JIMCHI:
I don't know where Mr. Betsy got his information, but it's wrong. I have verified with a friend at AA that AA is a participant in Worldtracer.
I also don't know where he would get the idea that other airlines can instantly tell a passenger exactly where his bag is at any given moment. Impossible so far as I know. If that were true, there would never be a missing piece of luggage. And I can assure him that Lufthansa CANNOT tell a passenger exactly where his bags are by "just a few taps on the computer". I arrived at FRA two weeks ago and no bags. They tapped and tapped on the computer, but couldn't tell me where they were. Finally after almost 45 minutes, they got a phone call from their ramp saying my bags had been misloaded into the container of bags scheduled to be transferred at FRA. Clearly Mr. Betsy's information is incorrect. He also seems to have a penchant for bashing AA, if not for baggage tracing, then for a lack of caviar during a financial crisis. He may be entitled to his opinion, but at least get the facts straight.</font>
I'd also like to speak in defense of AA's handling of baggage mishaps. Once when connecting thru STL my inbound was late; I physically made it to my connection, but my bag did not (which was somewhat understandable given that the inbound was late). I phoned AA's baggage service center to let them know where I was going to be staying (in rural Iowa). Once the bag arrived at the Cedar Rapids airport (the same day), AA hired a courier to carry the bag to my hotel, which was 2 hrs drive away from the airport. AA certainly made the best of a bad situation in this case, and went above and beyond what I would expect from any airline (certainly I would not have been assisted in this fashion by WN or another low-service carrier).