Originally Posted by JimAtTheBeach

Dear harvardalumna,

Sorry to hear about your experience, happy to know it had a good outcome. I had a similar experience 2 days ago flying from HKG to MNL. My bag never appeared on the carrousel after landing around 5 pm. Waited 30 minutes, still no bag. CS staff checked, Hong Kong confirmed it was loaded onto my flight. Not a good sign. Went to my hotel, waited for news, freaking out as I was in MNL just for 1 day with my meeting the next day at 10 am (and of course, no suit, presentation materials, etc. as they were all in my suitcase).

Station Manager was very helpful, claiming his (MNL) recovery rate on missing bags was 99%. He mentioned that just that day (Feb 21) he found a bag that had gone missing on Dec 15th. Wow, fingers crossed. Then they confirm they had 2 unclaimed bags from my flight--good sign, perhaps somebody took my bag by mistake. Then I find out the unclaimed bags look nothing like mine, hopes dashed again.

Went to bed around 1 am thinking, "OK, jeans & a T shirt for my formal presentation tomorrow morning... this is going to be fun.." Then at 2 am, get a phone call from the CX Station Manager, saying they had my bag--a lady mistakenly took it for hers, and had just brought it back to the airport. Whew!

Happy ending indeed, but I'm baffled that someone could take another's bag by mistake. Mine was black canvas, hers was a blue hard shell plastic case. I've flown nearly 2 million miles & have never taken the wrong bag.

Moral of the story: try & be at the baggage belt the moment the bags start coming out (I was in the last row of the plane & it took a while to get to baggage claim). Second, would be good if airports routinely checked baggage claim tickets with bags to ensure no mix-ups. I know that would slow down the arrival process, but would eliminate cases of heart failure like I experienced.