The Wandering Suitcase

Mistakes happen. That may be the one rule of human civilization. I can accept that. I’ve made my share. I sympathize when they happen. Unfortunately, at AirTran mistakes seem to be the business model.

Last Friday I tried to fly to Seattle for a weekend trip. I say “tried” because the flight leaving BWI was so delayed that it became impossible to make the connecting flight. I decided that leaving for a weekend trip to Seattle on Saturday didn’t make any sense so asked for a refund and my checked bag. I got the refund.

Even though I asked for my bag before the plane I was to have boarded even arrived, it never came back. Eventually they had me fill out a lost bag claim and told me they would call me. On Monday I called them. They thought my bag was still in Seattle. and would call me back when that along with it’s return booking was confirmed. That call came at 11:35PM Tuesday night. Who calls a residence at 11:35PM? Although I appreciated knowing that my bag had been found, it wasn’t so urgent that I needed to be woken up.

Finally, about 2PM my bag arrived here at work. That is almost six days to the hour since I left work to go to BWI last Friday. At least a quick check looks like it has all the stuff in it. I’ll verify that in detail tongiht, but nothing is obviously gone.

I still can’t figure out how a company can be so incompetent. Granted, the weather in Boston caused the initial flight delay and that wasn’t AirTran’s fault but everything from that point on was. I sure won’t be going out of my way to fly that airline again. More the other way around.

3 comments

  1. I wish I’d had that option I was carrying on camera gear and because of weather vagueness had enough clothes (along with surprisingly bulky stuff for cleaning braces) that I needed to check the bag. It has been a long time since I’ve had a bag go astray though this is the first time it happened when I never actually got on an airplane. 🙂

  2. When I saw the title in my RSS, I first thought the bag was still lost. I’m glad you got it back. Like Dara, I try to never check bags unless I have to.

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