Stolen Luggage Responsibilty
 

Regarding this report (https://www.flyertalk.com/articles/s...-of-theft.html)
I'm curious..... Where does the airline’s responsibility end… when the bags are loaded onto the carousel? If so, then does the airport authority take responsibility until the bags are in the passengers' possession? Or is the loss all on the passengers?

WN's duty of care is to deliver the bag to the luggage carousel. The airport authority has no specific duty to you.

Presumably you report the theft to the police, they can (if motivated) pull the video and possibly identify the thief.

Financially, you likely have a claim with your travel insurance and possibly your homeowners (standard off-property theft).

many years ago (MDW, circa 2003), it was not uncommon to see WN baggage agents and police officers insisting on seeing matching luggage claim tickets from everyone using one of the baggage claim exit points.

I think part of the security factor is the airline's responsibiliy. What if you were last off the plane. What if you got to the airport early (or too late) and your bag made an earlier flight than you did. It's then up to the airline agent to pull unclaimed bags before they get stolen.

I recall that too at LGA around 1998 only at one terminal. What a PITA. Then a union contract must have expired and it suddenly went away. I haven't seen it since, clearly a solution for a problem that didn't exist and/or far less expensive to pay claims for dirty laundry then maintain a nationwide security force to check tags that was easily circumvented by the determined anyway.

It's a common practice in many parts of the world.

Just goes to show. If you have to fish around for a bag tag, it's a PITA. If the bag is stolen, look for someone to blame.:D

Plus the wait in line trying to leave PITA !

Similar to the "how long to hold a connection" conundrum, depends if you are on the plane or not... :)

Yes it was the same at LAS. They had stations set up at each end of the baggage area and you just had to wait for them to get to you. I was glad to see that end. Maybe with everyone wearing masks now baggage stealing will come back? The videos won’t show much except masked thieves.

They did it at ATL for a while but eventually stopped.

Most airports these days don’t have someone checking for tag receipts. TSA does overkill with security they have done agdvts just watching people why not utilize them in baggage area no person should be allowed with out some proof of flying.

I'm pretty sure it went away after 9/11 as they moved security folks to ID check and xray and then never put them back.

Could be, I stopped going (weekly) to LGA in 1999 when WN came to ISP. But I remember the gate checkers being like of the keystone cop variety, just airport workers. But that probably made up the TSA workforce after 9/11 with huge pay increases.