I’ve been tracking my luggage when I travel using Apple's AirTags for about a year. Up until recently it’s just given us a little peace of mind to know exactly where our bags are at any given moment in time but it paid off in a huge way during our flight from Phoenix a few days ago.
We checked into Phoenix's SkyHarbor airport about four hours early for our flight home to St. Paul last Friday. We began to notice other airlines canceling their flights to Minnesota because of a major snowstorm that was forecasted to hit later but Delta airlines hadn’t started canceling yet so we were still reasonably optimistic. We had a nice lunch and continued hoping for the best.
Alas, just an hour before departure the airline announced that our flight was canceled. We rebooked another flight for the next day, reserved a room at a hotel near the airport, then went to retrieve our luggage we checked in from Delta. In all my years of flying I had never had a flight canceled before (I guess I’m lucky) so I asked the Delta agent at the lounge what the procedure was to retrieve our bags.
She assured us that if we went to the Delta Baggage Office in the baggage claim area our bags would be delivered there in around thirty minutes.
Fast forward ninety minutes and my wife’s bag finally came down the shoot of carousel 5. When I checked on the FindMy tracking app it still showed my bag 0.7 miles away in an airport storage facility!
Getting tired and starting to feel slightly defeated, back to the Delta Baggage Office I went. I told the agent I could see where the bag was on my phone because I had an AirTag in it. She got on her walkie-talkie and spoke with an employee of SkyHarbor’s baggage handling department and they claimed there was no such bag in their area.
Befuddled, I again opened my phone and actually showed the agent the bag’s exact location. She told me they said they couldn't find it and wasn’t sure what could be done. After some convincing on my part she called a Delta supervisor who agreed to walk to the storage room himself to look for the bag. I offered to go with him so we could use my phone, he said that wouldn’t be possible for security reasons.
I never saw that supervisor again but after another 30 minutes of waiting, an actual baggage handler with a neon vest appeared, rolling my bag to the Delta Office with a smirk on his face. I am convinced that if that AirTag wouldn’t have been in my suitcase I never would have seen that bag again, so it was $29 very well spent.
I’m not 100% sure the airport employees were running a scam (but my gut tells me they were running a scam). If you Google, “Baggage handlers stealing suitcases” it seems to be a widespread problem recently.
Moral of the story, if you fly, invest in AirTags or similar tracking devices so you can keep close tabs on your bags. Whether it was a scam or not, they proved themselves to be a real value for the money. Also, if this happens to you (I hope it never does), be persistent with the airport employees if they tell you nothing can be done and don’t take "no" for an answer. People who run these kinds of scams are looking for the easiest possible target, take as many precautions as you can to make sure you're not one of them.
All for now. Trust your instincts, invest in you, live boldly, and take chances.
~Eric Vance Walton~
(Gif sourced from Giphy.com. Photos are original.)
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