July 1st - Should you check in your baggage when flying?
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 1 July 2022
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today's podcast is all about flying with baggage – should you check it in?
I tell you what you can do to minimise the chance that your precious belongings will end up on sale at the Unclaimed Baggage Center at Scottsboro Alabama – and why you should assume you will never see your checked in bag again.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Corder. |
| 0:07.0 | Coming to you today from the very agreeable surroundings of the front of the upstairs of a London double-decker bus. |
| 0:17.0 | Just setting off from White City across to Camden Town and a splendid way to travel |
| 0:24.4 | and see a lot more of London and also keep out of the shower which set upon me just as I was |
| 0:31.6 | about to start cycling. I'm not talking to you about cycling though or being on lovely buses I'm talking to you about baggage because there's a bit of controversy around |
| 0:43.3 | I was on ITV this morning this morning and somebody called him saying oh no I lost my luggage I flew from |
| 0:53.3 | Toronto to Dublin to Heathrow two weeks ago and I haven't seen my luggage since. |
| 0:59.7 | My heart sank for poor Rosemary because what had happened is that that was, if I have not mistaken, the day that the baggage system unraveled 17th of June at Terminal 2 at Heathrow, |
| 1:16.5 | which meant that unfortunately many bags piled up among people waiting to go. You might have seen |
| 1:23.8 | the baggage mountain that suddenly appeared and lots of bags came in but didn't get |
| 1:30.5 | reunited with their owners and I understand that there are still problems with reuniting things. |
| 1:37.3 | So there's a couple of points about Rosemary's case. The first one is whenever you are connecting on flights, there is clearly much more of risk that bags are going to go missing. |
| 1:50.0 | If you were thinking of the worst places, I would say probably the European hubs, particularly Paris Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt isn't always great. Nor Amsterdam. Although they are used to quick |
| 2:04.8 | connections, your bags don't always make it. So don't get a connecting flight is the first rule. |
| 2:10.8 | Second rule is, of course, always put all your details on a piece of paper taped into the inside of your bag. |
| 2:20.3 | You have to assume that everything will be torn off. |
| 2:26.3 | And if it's an exterior label, it might well be mangled in the baggage machinery. |
| 2:32.3 | So... |
| 2:33.3 | Excuse me. So, excuse me. |
| 2:35.0 | So in that case, I hope that that was what the lovely Rosemary had done. |
| 2:43.0 | But the other thing I said was, whenever you're checking anything in, |
| 2:48.0 | assume you will never see it again. Now at which point I got roundly heckled. |
... |
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