Originally Posted by
NWIFlyer
It doesn't even need to be someone who comes off a flight tired through lack of sleep. Travelling from the Crowne Plaza in Dublin to the airport this week reasonably early in the morning, an elderly gentleman tried to lift my bag from the luggage rack rather than his own, before his wife fortunately pointed out his error. It transpired the one he really wanted was a completely different manufacturer, size, colour, had different ID tags and was on the other side of the bus!
I suspect accidental taking is rather more prevalent than any of us think.
I suspect many people have trouble with bag identification. I recall a TV program in the U.S. that followed the operations of Southwest Airlines where a woman was complaining about a missing bag. A staff member approached with her bag and it was nothing like what she had described; she grabbed it and hurried away.
I had a bag go missing after an LHR-DFW flight once, only to have it show up at my final destination - which means someone had mistakenly taken it through customs and redeposited it. It all worked out, but I really wish airports would actually check tags.