One thing I wish more people did when they travel is attach their personal information to their checked bags. Most travelers skip this because they don’t expect the airline to lose their bag. Unfortunately, there’s a reason why airlines have baggage offices: They mishandle thousands of bags every day. That’s why you want to make it as easy as possible for the airline to reunite you with your bag.

Some travelers are pretty good about attaching a tag with contact information to one of the bag’s handles. That’s good, but those tags can be torn off. Stuff like that happens. That’s why you should put the same information inside your bag as well, along with a print-out of your itinerary. That way if the baggage belt system manages to eat the tags and an airline employee is forced to search your bag, they’ll find out who the bag belongs to and where it needs to go.

Some people are afraid to do this because they don’t want bad guys finding this information. I understand their concern, but the odds of something like this happening are remote. I don’t have official numbers to back me up, but I feel comfortable saying that your odds of losing your bag forever by NOT including this information are better than the odds of a thief rifling through your bag and targeting your house while you’re away.

If putting contact information in your bag still makes you uneasy, please include your name and cell phone number at the very minimum! Alternatively, you could use a business address.

I’ve seen a few John Doe bags: They had no identification, no clues for us to go by. Eventually we had no choice but to ship such bags to our central baggage office. I assume they were eventually sold at auctions.

Don’t let that happen to your bag. Put contact information on both the inside and outside of your bag.

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confido1205 on February 9th, 2008 | File Under Checked Luggage | -