Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 15:37:47 -0600
From: "Tim Czajka" <timczajka@hotmail.com>
Subject: LRO: Re: Air Travel
Lee Jones wrote:
>... have them put it in the baggage compartment by hand as the last item
>and she would collect it as she exited
>the plane as the first item off the plane.
Don't EVER ask an airline to put luggage in the hold at the
last minute as you are boarding the plane. We have filmed
what happens to that last-minute, gate-checked luggage,
and it is amazing what it goes through. It is generally
THROWN down the jetway outer stairway to the ground
crew, who then rushes it to the conveyer truck where it
is THROWN onto the belt to the hold. In the case of a
larger plane that uses containerized baggage, last-
minute luggage cannot be put into a container, as they
will all have been loaded already. So it goes up the belt to the
loose-luggage hold in the very tail of the plane. This
is where they keep the mail bags and stuff like that. If
there is going to be any compartment on the plane that
isn't heated, this is it. The loose-hold is generally
the last one unloaded, and because the baggage is
not containerized, all the items are thrown from the end
of the conveyor to the baggage carts.
Anything out of the
routine during an airplane turnaround is resented by the ramp
crew, and last-minute, gate-checked baggage is one of the
most resented things of all, because it assumed by the crew
that the owner is too stupid to have realized the bag should
have been checked in the first place. So they beat the crap
out of the bag, hoping that maybe the owner will learn the hard
way he or she should check it properly the next time. You'll
never get an airline representative to tell you this is what happens,
but we've observed and filmed it at airports, large and small, all
over the world.
If you are going to check baggage, do so at the check-in counter
when you check in for the flight. Thinking that because you are
checking your baggage at the gate itself and so it will get better
handling because it's so close to the plane is a BIG mistake. I have
seen last-minute bags tumble down the steel staircase on the outside
of the jetway and land on the ground only to be hit by a fast-moving
tug or service vehicle. These severely damaged bags are simply scooped
up and tossed into the hold if it's a low-stance plane like a 737 or MD-80,
or they're stuck up in the loose-baggage hold in the tail of a larger plane.
If you want to make sure a piece of checked luggage gets as good
a treatment as it's possible to get given the nature of that airport's and
airline's baggage system, check it at the check-in counter out front and
make a big deal about how fragile it is, etc., etc., etc.
___________________________
C. Marin Faure
(original owner)
1973 Land Rover Series III-88
1991 Range Rover Vogue SE
Seattle
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 20 2001 - 20:09:17 EDT