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Missing luggage: Travellers’ worst nightmare
Confusion
Imagine being the last person at the airport conveyor belt and coming to that slow realisation that your bag isn’t coming.
Lost luggage can prove either highly irritating or, bizarrely, kind of convenient. If the airline loses your bag on the outbound flight, you’re left with only the clothes you travelled in, and might end up splashing most of your spending money on last-minute T-shirts and toiletries to carry you through.
NCAA to the rescue
Statistics released by the NCAA and made available to New Telegraph shows that on international flights for 2017, 22, 584 baggage were delayed or missing.
Lagos is home to missing baggage
In 2016, the airport processed over seven million passengers and, according to employees of the Nigerian Airport Handling Company PLC (NAHCO), who pleaded anonymity, an average of 20–30 cases of missing or delayed baggage were reported every day.
When passengers hand over their baggage to airline staff and officials, it is in the understanding that these bags and boxes will be conveyed, so that when they land at their destination and undergo the necessary procedure, their luggage will be waiting for them, intact.
Considering the fact that airlines and airports have enlisted the help of technology and years of practice to develop their systems and create clear procedures for handling and transporting luggage, there seems little reason for this to be such a frequent occurrence.
Role of airports
This does not always happen. According to NAHCO staff, most of the technology in Murtala Mohammed Airport are decades behind the times. They have conveyor belts with non-existent scanners and faulty baggage carousels, so there are instances where the ground handling staff has to move the luggage from the bag room, directly to the baggage carts.
Most local airlines don’t even bother with this process. In local flights, the luggage is usually placed on a baggage cart at the airline’s ticket stand and taken directly to the plane by airline staff.
About 30–40 minutes before the flight takes off, the bags are brought out to the aircraft. There, a team of ground handlers loads the bags on board the plane according to a load plan.
The load plan tells how many bags go in each cargo compartment to keep the weight and balance right and ensure fuel efficiency.
When the plane reaches its destination, another team offloads it into baggage carts, which are moved to a baggage carousel. The baggage is then offloaded onto the carousel that brings it into the terminal where you pick it up.
According to a senior official of FAAN who spoke to our correspondent on the condition of anonymity, the human factor is responsible for a lot of the baggage that goes missing but, as the case is not unique to MMA, there are many reasons beyond that.
Sometimes, the bag tag gets torn off in transit and there is no information to indicate where it is headed or when it should land.
Airline staff in a bid to make extra cash from un-remited baggage fees, often attaches hand-written bag tags that make it difficult to connect the bags to the appropriate flight.
The Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology will replace the existing barcode and hand scanning procedure that’s been used industry-wide since the early 90s and is the first time that the technology has been used this way in the USA.
Last Line
If an airline has ever lost your luggage then you will understand how frustrating it is. Such a sensation is felt by hundreds of people departing airports across the world.