Anonymous wrote:I think there are small circumstances where it is useful...like it the tag falls off your bag. Airlines can find tagged bags. In scenario above PP had more info but would likely have gotten her bag back either way. I recently traveled with someone who used them. It seemed like another thing to concern your self with. She was checking on her bags regularly. No issues with any of our bags. I am 56 and had a baggage delay 1 time. It was delivered to my hotel in about 12 hours.
PP. I'm 55.
1) On my first trip to Europe as a child, Pan Am lost our luggage so we couldn't leave the Munich area for 1.5 days. Back then, they wouldn't ship your luggage anywhere out of the arrival city.
2) When I was in college, my family of 5 (along with about 50-100 other people) did an entire Caribbean cruise without our checked bags thanks to the combined incompetence of Air Jamaica, our now defunct cruise line, and various port countries' customs departments.
3) On a trip to Hungary in my 30s, two of our checked suitcases made it and one did not. The one with some food gift Christmas presents. It did come later...but we were flying very close to Christmas. A few more hours and the gifts might not have arrived before the holiday festivities started.
4) The recent Air France debacle occurred right before an airline worker strike in France. And one of our party was intending to travel home by car to a different US city after landing. So we needed that luggage re-routed. And some people who had been impacted by a previous Air France strike earlier that year were waiting months to get their stuff back. Because a warehouse worth had built up due to labor actions.
5) For business purposes, I once shipped a precious box of oversized prints by DHL from California to Germany. We shipped it in a hard black plastic chest since absolutely no crushing or bending would have been acceptable. This packaging was accepted at the pickup point. The box was shortly thereafter completely lost somewhere at Newark airport for three days, totally missing the necessary schedule to reach the event where we wanted to use the prints. Luckily, as backup, we'd paid to send a person to the event in question with a full backup set of the materials.
6) I've known people who've had things stolen from their luggage or never got their lost suitcase back.
So I guess "lucky you", PP who only ever had one baggage delay.