From the Emirates forum there was a post which had this youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHZMn9yOBwg

Read the comment in it: "If your baggage is lost we make multiple attempts to contact the owner.. i think after 3 months if its not claimed then it goes into an "auction" where the employees at the airport bid on 1 cart of bags ( from 20 - 40 bags) avg price goes bout $700 - $1500 and 90% of the time the person who bought the cart set up makes $5000 +"

I mentioned my opinion in that forum, but think it needs a wider audience...

It certainly gives employees an incentive to not care about the safety of anyones bag. I don't know if that's just for this airport (Miami?) but I'd be shocked. It would provide a nice incentive for employees not to follow up contacting the owner correctly (or removing any id and claiming it had none). If anything, they should give them to charities to sell.

If I had it my way (which will never happen, but I can dream), I would make % lost baggage a factor in wage/bonus reviews as an incentive to improve the situation. What they have right now is an incentive to make the situation worse!

What do you guys think? Is this terrible behavior or what - and more importantly - does anyone know if this is the typical approach used in most airports?

I would fill up 100 cheap old bags full of shredded newspaper and purposely "lose" it, meaning the winning buyer makes a grand profit of negative $700 to $1500.

But in all seriousness I definitely can see how this encourages carelessness. What really matters is that those responsible for loading the bags, contacting the owner etc all remain independent as to minimise the possibilty of corruption. And CCTV, of course.

In the UK, bags are auctioned off to the public and the proceeds go to charity. There's an article here on how it works in the UK.

What suprises me is that unidentifiable luggage still exists in the day and age. Are there any luggage manufacturers who provide luggage with unique identifiers built into the case? It can't be that hard to etch a number in 4 different places around the inside/outside so that it was pretty much always identifiable?

That's an interesting article - thanks - glad to know at least some money makes it to charity out of it. I do wonder how many bidders are airport employees or family and friends. The one improvement I would suggest is to see the charity handle the auction - so they can ransack the bags beforehand to get any real valuables and thus maximise their earnings.

I didn't realise that they don't bother to open your case to try identify the person before sending to auction. While I do always have name tags (name + email + phone, sometimes address) on my luggage I had never thought about what would happen if I forgot one time. I always leave a copy of travel insurance in the suitcase (and keep another copy on me), which has my contact details. I guess it'll never be looked at - until someone buys the case from auction.

That's BA attitude, may not be the same for others. In any case from my understanding the obviously valuable stuff is taken out and sold seperately - assuming of course it hasn't already been "investigated" by people working at airports

There was a story about this in the UK a couple of years back. Bags that were supposedly unidentifiable were sold off at public auctions (that anyone could attend, not just airline employees) and the proceeds went to charity.

The reason for the press was that out of all the bags the newspaper investigating purchased, they managed to identify the owner of over half the bags themselves through either the owners details found inside the bag, contacting names in an address book inside, company documents on headed paper etc. It just showed how "hard" some of the airlines really try to find the owners of lost bags.

In the USA, we have naturally enough made a business of disposing of lost baggage in world class style - meaning in volume - at the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama.

Alabama Tourism video of UBC: link

Youtube video with jewelry folks packed and lost: link

Today show segment on UBC on Youtube: link

Most amateurish video ever shot of the UBC: link
(Spring break road trip to the UBC)
(N.B. Do not watch if prone to motion sickness)

For the BBC article they bought 3 lost bags and wrote:
I'm not sure what they're hinting at here (!) but it looks like not everything makes it to the charity auction

Yeah, I'm surprised also. I would expect a search of the bag if it couldn't be identified by any other means.

Miami-Dade Aviation regularly has auctions for unclaimed items.