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January 4, 2006

Annoying Airline Stuff

I tend to fly a lot. Generally, because of where I'm going, I've been using AirTran lately. And generally, they've been good to deal with. (Heck, their built-in XM radio led to a great Christmas present. Tonight, however, they get a criticism.

AirTran's hub is in Atlanta. Atlanta is a busy airport. However, you would expect them to be able to transfer a bag from one gate in a terminal to another gate in a terminal. Especially when the gap between the incoming and outgoing flight is something like two hours. And especially especially when the departure of the flight is held up for about a half hour in order to "make sure all our luggage gets on board". But no, apparently not.

There were about 20 people who didn't get a total of about 50 bags on the flight. Apparently there were a similar number of bags not transferred last night. And apparently, this is pretty common (although, to be fair, I've never had it happen before on AirTran).

I understand the complexity of baggage routing: it's not an easy problem to send tens of thousands of bags per day from one point to another, even in the same airport, when the actual flights people are going to be on are themselves changing, so the end point keeps moving. However, it startles me to think that there is apparently not one single airline who can yet do with my bags what FedEx or UPS can do with a package: determine where it is with reasonable certainty at any point in time, and make sure that it gets where it needs to be with little chance of error, so long as circumstances do not change en route (again, a cancelled flight is an obvious reason why a bag might not make it to the right place).

Mainly, I'm annoyed that I'm in Pontiac, Michigan and my heavy coat is in Atlanta. And it's cold here.

Posted by jeff at January 4, 2006 2:19 AM

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Comments

Jeff,

It will get into the 40s today. It is not in any way cold in Michigan right now. Welcome to Michigan.

Posted by: Brian at January 4, 2006 10:55 AM

It's not the temperature (I actually like it cold); it's the delta. There was a forty degree change between getting on the plane and getting off. That's not easy to take, and nice little buffer is useful. A sweatshirt hardly counts as a buffer.

Posted by: Jeff Medcalf [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 4, 2006 1:57 PM

I used to fly frequently, and found about one out of five trips they lost my luggage...but I always got it back...sometimes a week later, sometimes on the next flight from the hub...
The trick is to have a nice carryon with enough stuff for two days...as for coats, always carry that with you and place it in the overhead bin...
Until you have carried a subzero parka with you thru Manila airport you haven't lived...

Posted by: tioedong at January 4, 2006 5:09 PM