Losing luggage
I heard a news report on the radio and tracked down the source: According to an IT company called SITA that apparently handles baggage tracking for the airline industry (wow, there’s a job description for you — “I’m Senior Director of Tracking Down Lost Luggage Data Processing”), 30 million bags are mishandled annually, and 204,000 of those are lost outright, out of 2 billion passengers.
They don’t say how many bags are carried by those passengers (they’re too busy flogging their services), so let’s assume each passenger checks an average of 1.5 bags. So out of 3 billion bags, 1% are mishandled, and 0.68% of those (or less than 0.01% of the total) are lost.
Those figures are a good match to my perception and my experience. I believe I’ve flown more than 100 times (50 trips over 38 years), and I’ve had my luggage delayed exactly once — and it showed up within the 31 hours they say is average. But, I have met people with a very different perception — it seems to me that the common perception is 5-10%, resulting in behavior changes (people using bulky carry-ons rather than checking bags purely for fear of losing the bag rather than because it’s faster) as well as unnecessary stress.
I think the perception difference is due an error of weight on the incidents. Everyone knows someone who has had a bag delayed or lost, and many people have experienced it themselves. If I know 1,000 people who have flown in an airline one or more times, and 100 of them have at least once had a lost or delayed bag, then the simplistic calculation is that this is a 10% problem. But those 1,000 people have probably flown 100,000 or more times, and 99% of the time they haven’t had an issue.
Because comedians and others may play up the idea of how frequently bags are lost, that reinforces the perception that this event is more common than it is. So it becomes a PR issue — the airlines should be able to combat that perception. But they can’t, because when it comes down to it, 1% delayed bags is a terrible stat. On an average flight of 600 passengers (assuming perfect distribution), six bags will be delayed.
99% may be good enough for some metrics, but if our servers at work had only 99% uptime we’d be in trouble; if airlines only landed 99% of planes safely, very few people would choose to fly.
In conclusion, the problem seems to be less bad than it’s perceived to be, but I’m surprised by how bad a problem this is.