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An insider has revealed that airline passengers trying to game the system are partly responsible for the infuriating problem of lost luggage when flying.
Peter Taylor*, a baggage handler at Brisbane International Airport, told Daily Mail Australia the persistent problem of lost luggage is caused by a combination of poor management, undertrained and ‘lazy’ staff, and deceptive customers.
He also revealed that airlines such as Jetstar and Air New Zealand are worse than others for delayed flights in part because of how many passengers have to be removed for causing disturbances.
Mr Taylor said there has been a spike in lost baggage since Qantas and other airlines laid off baggage handlers during the Covid pandemic and outsourced the work to firms such as dnata, Menzies and Swissport, as flights returned to normal schedules.
‘These people are not being trained correctly … and there’s so many people they are employing that shouldn’t be employed, they’re not smart enough … It’s not getting better, in fact it’s getting worse,’ he claimed.
The infuriating problem of lost luggage when flying is caused by several factors, and some of it is the passengers’ own fault, an airport insider has revealed. Passengers are shown using self check-in machines at Sydney Airport
Unidentified bags and bags that were jamming a carousel in Brisbane International Airport are pictured. Some of the bags have no tags, and usually most lost bags don’t have personal identification attached to them
‘It’s a dead-end job. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to be a baggage handler, but there’s a couple of things you need to (be able to) read a tag, you gotta know the abbreviation where that bag is going.’
Mr Taylor said poor management was also to blame, with those training new hires often not having been properly trained themselves.
This is particularly a problem when the wi-fi goes down and scanners don’t work, meaning the handlers have to work manually, using a process known as ‘bingo’.
‘Not many people know how to do bingo,’ he said.
‘When the system’s down you’ll get a sheet of paper with 50 little squares on it and then for every bag you put into the ULD (unit load devices), you peel off one of the bingo stickers and put it on that sheet.
‘A lot of guys don’t know how to do that.’
A baggage handler at Brisbane International Airport (pictured) said lost baggage is caused by combination of factors including poor management, undertrained ‘lazy’ staff and deceptive customers
Mr Taylor gets frustrated when this happens and tells them they’re supposed to know these things.
‘When you first apply for the job you’ve got to do a test, and it says where would this bag end up … how does this bag get from Brisbane to London via Singapore?’
But Mr Taylor said many of the new recruits don’t know the basics because they’re not being properly trained. ‘Training is paramount to understand what goes on,’ he said.
There is also a high turnover of staff and sometimes people just don’t turn up for a shift, he said, because they were at a party the night before, they don’t want to start at 4am or just can’t be bothered going to work.
Mr Taylor takes pride in his job and hates seeing bags miss a flight.
‘It’s happened to me on numerous flights over the years and it spoils the start to a holiday, so that’s why I am focused on nothing missing the flight,’ he said.
The lost baggage situation reached comical proportions last September when a lone bag was pictured abandoned on the tarmac at Sydney Airport
Sometimes bags are missing for days due to ‘pure laziness’ by airport staff. People are pictured waiting for bags at Sydney Airport
But bags often do miss flights, and sometimes, he said, he has ‘seen bags sit here for days (out of) pure laziness’ by airport staff.
Some of the problems are caused by the passengers themselves, though, especially those using the self check-in machines that now dominate many airports due to staff cuts.
‘Usually when someone self checks-in they don’t correctly stick the bag tag on and the tag falls off as the bag circulates through the security scanners.
‘Then the scanners can’t push the bag to the correct loading carousel so they end up (in the lost and misplaced luggage section),’ he said.
Another problem caused by self check-ins is people still have tags on their bags from previous flights, which can lead their luggage being sent down the wrong chute when the scanner reads it.
And some people try to get around being charged for excess baggage fees by using self check-ins.
‘So then all of a sudden bags are coming downstairs and the poor guys loading the planes can’t lift them because they’re too heavy,’ Mr Taylor said.
An Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report released on Monday said that nearly four per cent of domestic flights were cancelled in April and close to 30 per cent were late.
It found that Jetstar was ‘notably worse’ than other airlines, cancelling just over eight per cent of its flights in April.
‘After showing signs of improvements earlier in the year, the latest rates of flight cancellations and delays have gotten worse and remain poor compared to long-term industry averages,’ the report said.
‘They’re unloading people off the flight because obviously they’re giving abuse to people and so the bags have to come off and then you gotta go and find the bags,’ Mr Tayor said,
He claimed such disturbances happen more often on Jetstar and Air New Zealand flights, but that airlines such as Qatar, Singapore and Emirates do not have such problems.
A spokesman for Jetstar said ‘that claim is inaccurate’ and that the airline is working hard to improve its punctuality and reliability.
The national carrier has struggled with lost bags in the past year, along with cancellations, delays and staff shortages as people started flying again post-Covid.
To address the lost luggage problem, Qantas will add baggage tracking in a major overhaul of its app, which is expected to be available by the end of 2023.
Qantas has vowed to make lost luggage a thing of the past with this technological solution for passengers to track their bags.
Travellers are pictured using self check-in kiosks for Qantas at Sydney Airport – an insider revealing customers’ use of the machines is sometimes the cause of lost luggage
Qantas has vowed to make lost luggage a thing of the past as it unveils a raft of new changes to its airline. Baggage handlers are pictured
Mr Taylor said he loves his job and gets ‘great satisfaction out of making sure that a missing bag makes it’.
But he said the misplaced baggage problem is ‘not getting better. in fact it’s getting worse’.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted dnata, Menzies, Swissport and Air New Zealand for comment.
* not his real name
