I used to lose my luggage with alarming frequency; or to be more precise, airlines used to misplace it at whim. I went through a period of a year or so when (honestly) my bags would go adrift in about one journey in three; including a ridiculous flight from Inverness to Edinburgh one Sunday morning with four of us on board, and nothing else going on at the airport.
Barcelona has also caused me a degree of strife in the past, as I was reunited with a bag checked from New York via Oporto only when I checked in ten days later to return home. So checking in a bag to fly from Inverness to Barcelona (via London) was possibly over-optimistic to begin with.
It absolutely bewilders me how in this security-laden world, bags with ample connecting time go astray, but they do. I will be interested to see if mine has been rifled, as I do believe that these issues are really caused by baggage handlers misappropriating baggage to look through before “finding” it again. The extreme baggage systems in place today with their bewildering array of bar-codes and battery of fail-safe protocols should ensure that bags don't go walkabout, but they do.
The unsung heroes of this world, however, are the poor folks whose job it is to help frustrated travellers fill in the forms, instill them with hope and still smile.
I have a friend whose career with Air Canada was in the murky underworld of lost baggage. Permanently serene, with that look that comes from either a genuine inner-peace or narcotics; Ron has helped me on more than one occasion summoning trackers from his network of bloodhounds, and mysteriously reuniting me with some lost item or other.
I hope my bags come tomorrow; more, I hope that they have not been rifled and even more, I hope that I am in when the van arrives.
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