Originally Posted by
invisible
I live in Singapore. Theft from overhead bins is underreported, but quite common occurrence on local regional routes - mainly between Indonesia/Malaysia and Vietnam/Hong Kong/China/Korea. This is due to the fact that a lot of people travel with large amount of cash. There are criminal syndicates operating/specializing on such activities.
For me the solution is simply my carry-on have locks, and they are locked. They won't stopped a determined thief with the right equipment but enough of an inconvenience they'll move to my neighbors bag.
On a recent flight my seat mates were a young Chinese couple, looked like rich spoiled crowd. As I always sit bulkhead nothing much can store in seat or in-infront. As we got ready to land they took down their Gucci bag, the boyfriend pulled out probably a few tens of thousands of dollars and his passport to fill out the forms, counted out what looked like a thousand or two to give to his girl friend and then thru it all back in the overhead, dang....
But sorry not sure how a gang th can make that much after paying for tickets and such, but I guess shorter cheaper flights might be interesting, LOL