Saturday, June 28, 2008

Travel Notes: Suggestion for the Airlines

The first stage of our trip to Italy took us to the Boston airport, along with two of our checked bags. The third bag, for no reason I could discover, came on a later flight.


It would be helpful if, in such situations, the airline would announce the point at which all of the baggage from a particular flight had been put on the carousel. That way I would know my bag was missing and could take action accordingly, instead of waiting around for another twenty or thirty minutes in case it was still coming. So far as I can recall, I have never observed an airline doing so.

4 comments:

Jonathan said...

As far as I know, the helpful airline is a mythical beast, like the unicorn or the honest politician.

Individual airline employees may sometimes be helpful as a matter of personal initiative, but the system is designed merely to convey bums on seats from one place to another as cheaply as possible.

["Bums on seats" is a British theatrical expression, but perhaps you get the idea.]

Anonymous said...

Some airports have screens at the carousels that give the status of the 5 flights unloading there. Sometimes they're even comprehensible.

Raphfrk said...

The problem is that such a policy would be the responsibility of the airport.

There are thus 2 layers between the customer and the business.

Also, if a business manages to convince an airport to improve the quality of its service, the benefit is shared between all competitors. Thus there are 2 layers and 1 of them suffers from a free rider issue.

Anonymous said...

Several European airports have a sign saying "last bag on belt". It is quite helpful.