Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Well apart from around the shoreline there is no pretext of ice in the harbor now. Drizzle and rain all day Monday. The forecast for tonight calls for up to 20cm accumulation of wet snow, or joy!

I do not do much travel by air these days, but the case of the Granddaughters [GD] lost luggage is an intriguing one.

Last Sunday GD boards an Innu Mikun [IM] flight from Nain to Goose Bay direct.
One would think that a 19 seater twin Otter arriving in a tin pot terminal like the one in Goose Bay would not offer up any issues with reclaiming luggage. Not so my dear Watson.

When the GD bag was not on the ‘carousel’ [straight run of 20 feet] after arrival she made inquiries at IM desk. GD told that when bag was located they would get it to her.

GD and her boyfriend on arrival in Goose Bay rushed straight around to the AC counter to check on their forwarding flight. BF then went back to the luggage pick up area where his bags were there but GD bag was not.

Off GD goes, having to wait until Thursday for her next leg back to flight school.

Come Monday mid day and still no sign of bag and no one at IM desk answering the phone GD starts to become more than a little pissed.

Finely GD gets through to IM and told the bag can not be located and GD will have to fill out a claim form. As this blog is family orientated [it’s not but makes for a better story] I will not go into the finer facts of the GD language on leaning that news.

By 1 pm GD manages to get through to her mom who works with a rival airline. Nothing like having some one with an in to the industry when a crises arises, as proves true in this case for sure.

Mom manages to get through to an attendant at IM desk at the Goose Bay airport. Mom explains the situation then is put on hold for a protracted length of time.

Finely the attendant comes back on the line with the news that GD bag has been located in the security office of the airport. If GD comes in she can pick up her bag.

Mom relays this to GD with the added advice to check the bag for anything missing before leaving the airport.

The good news is nothing was missing and that at first blush the system such as it is worked.

The bad news is; the bag was handed to security from behind Air Labradors desk, not IM.

Why did security not inform IM they had the bag, surly it still had the IM destination tag on it.

Why didn’t IM ask security if there was any missing bag when they were supposedly making every effort to locate GD bag.

So it is not known if someone inadvertently picked up GD bag off the carousel, or if it was misplaced some how before the carousel.

How the bag got behind Air Labs counter is a mystery, why security did not inform IM is a mystery, why IM did not make every effort to locate the bag is a mystery.

24 hours of frustrations and being without your luggage could have been avoided with some descent customer care and a higher degree of professionalism on several parts. I wonder if this type of thing happens often in GB airport?

1 comment:

Shammickite said...

Baggage handling in airports is a total mystery to me. With all the labelling and checking and double checking, how can they misplace so many bags? I've been lucky so far, never had a bag lost. But once my luggage went on ahead of me and I travelled from St Johns to TO the next day, and I had a devil of a job getting reunited with my bag at TO airport.... but it was there, waiting for me, just not where I was expecting it to be.