This Is The Surprise Reason Airlines Aren't Losing Luggage

It's not your imagination: Airlines aren't losing luggage as often as they used to.

But to understand why airlines aren't losing luggage, you have to go to the airport and trade your rollaboard for a guest ID card and a bright orange vest. Then climb down a flight of stairs and step onto the ramp. You're in the baggage make-up area, where ramp agents sort your checked luggage and then send it to your flight.

I visited Hawaiian Airlines' baggage make-up area in Honolulu recently, looking for clues to the airline's improving luggage record.

Here's how Hawaiian is doing: For the first 9 months of 2018, its rate of mishandled bags was virtually unchanged at 2.73 reports per thousand passengers, according to the Transportation Department (DOT). That's a so-so-so record, putting it in sixth place among domestic carriers.

As of October 2018, though, Hawaiian had only 2.50 reports per thousand passengers, according to the DOT. The previous October, it had 2,750 reports, or 3.12 per thousand passengers.

Because of the government shutdown, we don't specifically know their current mishandled baggage rate. But Hawaiian tells me it recorded a 27% drop in mishandled baggage claims between October and December, compared with the same period in 2017. In November, it reported just 1.75 claims per 1,000 passengers, a 30% decrease year-over-year.

Hawaiian's luggage secret

What's going on? Eddy Ganir, an operations manager for Hawaiian's Honolulu Control Center, says the airline began rolling out a sophisticated scanning system called the SmartSuite, developed by Brock Solutions, last March. It basically does what you probably assumed baggage systems were already doing: It scans your bag like UPS or FedEx and tracks it from drop-off to your return. It's one of the reasons airlines aren't losing luggage as often as they used to.

"As of last month, the system has been operational at most of our stations," he says. The exceptions are Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland, which will go online this spring.

Why airlines aren't losing luggage

The old system tracked each bag manually, which was both difficult and error-prone. But the new system scans each bag every time it changes custody, ensuring that the checked luggage is going to the right place.

"The information is uploaded in real time for review," says Ganir.

A mobile scanner and web-based application give ramp agents real-time information, including flight details such as time of departure and a flight's registration number. Hawaiian also knows the total bags expected for a flight, as well as the number of bags already loaded, and can compare those figures to determine if any bags are missing.

Everything's changing for the better

For the 530 Hawaiian Airlines ramp agents -- 320 of whom work at the airline's Honolulu hub -- the new scanning system has changed the way they work. Now, if they load a bag onto the wrong cart, the system alerts them almost immediately. SmartSuite also suggests ways of improving baggage handling. And when you're transporting approximately 24,000 bags a day -- roughly 20,000 of which go through Honolulu -- even a small improvement can have a dramatic effect on an airline's loss record.

One clever evolution is what the airline calls an "action item" that alerts the agent to remove bags if a passenger misses a flight. For example, say you're flying from Kona to Phoenix with a connection in Honolulu. You make it to Honolulu, but miss the flight to Phoenix. The system will automatically remove your bags from the Phoenix flight. So you'll have that change of clothes for tomorrow.

"Our new baggage tracking system allows us to make better business decisions on whether we should hold a flight because we know where the bags of each of our guests are located," says Ganir.

Are "zero" luggage losses possible?

Several airlines that use this scanning technology are already closing in on the 1 mishandled-bag-per-thousand record, a number once thought to be impossible. So what will it take to get it down to zero?

A couple of things. The DOT would have to raise compensation levels for lost luggage, which it hasn't done in several years. Passengers would have to vote with their wallets, too, rewarding the carriers like Hawaiian with their business and punishing the ones that continue to sort luggage manually. (At a time like this, with most of the country in a deep-freeze, it's very easy to reward Hawaiian with your business.)

If Hawaiian's experience has taught us anything, it's that lost luggage could soon become a thing of the past. And wouldn't that be a significant upgrade for everyone?

Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that empowers consumers to solve their problems and helps those who can't. He's the author of numerous books on consumer advocacy and writes weekly columns for King Features Syndicate, USA Today, and the Washington Post. If you have a consumer problem you can't solve, contact him directly through his advocacy website. You can also follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or sign up for his daily newsletter.