kg07

Hi all,

Thought I would post a quick anecdote of what happened to me at the end of a recent long-haul trip, with a couple of words of wisdom at the end to maybe prevent it from happening to you.

Flew home Dub - Phl and Phl-Mia just before the holidays. SWU cleared (yay!) but of course the seat had no power for 8 hours (boo!), but such is life.

Anyway, on the domestic segment, I was in 1A with my roll-aboard stored above a couple of rows behind me. Plane arrives to the gate, everyone gets up in the usual scramble, and I decide to wait a minute to let the other passengers go by. Make my way back, and my bag is completely gone.

At the same moment, another passenger yells out that his bag is gone as well. In his case, it was his backpack.

We ask the flight attendants what to do, and they are very courteous, but have absolutely no idea. Eventually, we realize that there is an extra roll aboard and backpack in the overhead (after everyone else deplaned).

Between the other passenger (who coincidentally was with me on the Dublin flight) and myself, we very quickly deduced that someone has taken the wrong bags with them as they deplaned. He then also realizes it was the drunk passenger next to him in row 3 - who had three double cocktails on the way from Philly to Miami.

We deplaned carrying the culprit’s baggage, but with absolutely no idea what to do. Ground attendants tried to page him, which is unsuccessful. He also left his cell phone in his bag, so calling him was out.

By then, we are both royally pissed off, not only with the drunk idiot but also with the airline not being able to help us. There is clearly no policy or procedure in place for something like this. After 12 hours of transit, we each just wanted to take our things and go home.

I came up with an idea of looking through drunk guy’s luggage to try to find his contact information. I rifled through the bag and found his tax return, his checkbook, and most importantly, all of his phone numbers. I did not want to do this, but again, we had absolutely no recourse or way to get our bags back since the guy was clearly gone. The ground attendant half heartedly tried to stop me from doing this, but very quickly backed off when I asked him what his alternative plan was. A police officer showed up, but he also agreed with what I was doing - make sure we have a way to locate and contact the guy to get our bags back. (Obviously being as respectful as possible with this guys personal items).

Anyway, 30 min later, drunk passenger eventually realized he had the wrong bags when he was at baggage claim area. We receive a page to go to baggage claim and were able to get our bags back. I’m usually pretty calm and easy-going, but I did not hesitate to give the passenger a very strong piece of my mind.

So - lessons learned -

1) be vigilant about your luggage. I’m now going to put my bag on the opposite side of the cabin from where I am sitting, so I can keep an eye on it while other pax are beginning to move.

2) If your carryon item goes missing, the best thing that you can do is exit the plane quickly and try and find it yourself. If instead of waiting on the plane I had charged into the terminal, I am certain I would’ve been able to identify my bag quickly.

3) This incident is by no means AA’s fault. It’s the drunk guy’s fault. (The bags looked absolutely nothing alike - he was very drunk). However, AA does need to have some better training on policies and procedures to help passengers when this happens.

Cheers and safe travels!

JJeffrey

What a mess, glad you guys were able to get your stuff back.

Fortunately I think this is the kind of thing that happens so infrequently that it's probably not on AA's radar with regards to implementing some kind of specific process for when it happens. Not much else a GA can do other than page the pax and call the police if necessary, etc.

I definitely agree re: get off ASAP and try to locate the bag yourself if at all possible.

In this case if you know the pax (and seat #) you could ask the GA to look up their itinerary to see if they were terminating in MIA and if they had checked bags (go to baggage claim) or if they were connecting (go to connecting gate).

IADCAflyer

Air Tags are your friends here.

kg07

Bingo. I previously ruled these out because I don’t check luggage, but I recently thought maybe I should invest in a couple. Thanks for reminding me!

kg07

I think you are right. The “policy” is really that the airline cannot do much, so be as proactive as you can in trying to get your stuff back and don’t wait for the airline to spring into action to help.

I do have to believe that this happens on a somewhat recurring basis with bags that look alike, but in those cases the passenger would discover this sooner because they are coherent.

We did ask the ground attendants to look into connecting flights, but Miami was the passenger’s end destination so that did not help much.

I’m just left with this lingering feeling that it was not quite right to be rifling through a stranger’s bag right in front of the check-in desk with random people walking by and looking at us…..

enviroian

That just made me laugh out loud.

suziemay

Omg what a nightmare. So glad you got your stuff back!

Also goes to show I was correct in asking a dumbass entitled passenger in J one time to move his bags to the cabin storage above his actual seat, rather than taking up room in mine. First he sat in the wrong seat, took up the entire cabin storage, insisted he was in the right seat and I was wrong, then refused to move his stuff when he moved to his correct seat leaving me no room. Then insisted I was the one being difficult in asking him to move his stuff. I mean, it took 30 seconds, and one of his items was a suit carrier that he could have easily just laid on top of his other bag. He only got up when I said ok I’m going to put my bag on top of your suit carrier then. Human beings can be so disappointing sometimes.

And yea, I’ve started air-tagging all my bags now, go order them right now! Definitely helped give some peace of mind

kg07

I know, right? Great game plan - 1) place essential personal documents with confidential information in bag. 2) drink as fast as possible. 3) forget bag.

Antarius

4.???
5. Profit

I've had this happen to me before. Monday morning flight, the entire F cabin was black rollaboards with EXP tags. Someone grabbed mine. Fortunately they realized soon after and came back to the gate where I was waiting with theirs for a bit.

I now have multiple tags on my bag. It's very clear that it's definitely not theirs.

EXP100

H'm another reason I'm glad that I rarely use a rollerboard and carry a shoulder bag instead. Not only can I move quicker with it carrying it gives me a little workout. And no tanked up moron is ever going to mistake it for their rollerboard.

ZenFlyer

I can see why this would seem unpleasant in the moment, but rest assured that this was the correct thing to do under the circumstances. In principle, it might be preferable for AA personnel or the police to do the actual search, but they weren't stepping up to the plate, and searching the bag was the only way to get it back to its owner. And you were correct to do it in public view -- going to a more deserted place would have looked sketchy imho. Thanks for relating the story in detail, I will remember this should I be unfortunate enough to experience such an incident in the future.

guv1976

I would not be so quick to let AA off the hook. Did the drunk passenger appear intoxicated after his second double on a three-hour flight? If so, then AA had an obligation to cut him off.


"(b) No certificate holder may serve any alcoholic beverage to any person aboard any of its aircraft who—

(1) Appears to be intoxicated;"

If he was already drunk after the second double, then AA should not have served him the third.

AJNEDC

How and why did a police officer happen to show up? Did AA call him or her on you? I find this a bit weird.
Do not understand the need for people to be sloshed to cope...

Happy for you that it turned out well.

stant

and this, my friends is the second half of the reason why there will always be gate lice. Heck I'm CK and I still line up with the rest of um. Your bags should never be behind you if there is anything you can possibly do about it. I always try for 1 isle. The starboard side overhead oftentimes has emergency equipment over it in row 1, and row 1 is obviously bulkhead, so I make DAMN sure my bags go directly over me, and I dont leave them behind my seat.

platbrownguy

my hopes and dreams in 14 characters