So did you ever have an airline lose your baggage?

You would think that in this era of high technology, this would not be a problem. Well many a person still ends up arriving at their destination with nothing more than the clothes on their back and a frown. To boot, you usually stand there waiting for your bags getting angrier and angrier as you slowly come to accept the fact that your bags were never on the plane with you. This is after, of course, you having pulled many a bag that looks just like yours off the conveyor with false hope that this will be the lucky one that's actually yours. You then most likely checked other belts and other flights and had to talk to several airport employees who know nothing. Of course.



The problem used to be that your bags would just go down that belt when you checked in to god knows where and then you'd have to rely on people to get them to the right plane. Well things advance a bit later on and now your bags get a fancy bar code attached to them so that they can be sorted properly. But as I'm sure you've experience at the grocery store, those scanners don't always work. The airport seems to be not that much different. Apparently, there's a good chance that the scanner won't pick up the code on the bag, so if it was heading to the wrong plane, there would be no notice for anyone to stop it. And that is why your bag seems to take a vacation away from you. You may think that it was trying to run away or that someone has stolen it for that old gold chain you consider priceless but it was more than likely human and machine error.

However, there appears to be a cure in the works. There's a little something call an RFID tag.



You may not have heard of them but companies like Wal-Mart have invested billions into this technology. Basically these puppies will replace bar codes. They essentially have a unique signature that will identify the item they're attached to and where it's moving. An airport in Hong Kong is already working with these tags in sorting the baggage and apparently there's a 99% success rate of making sure your luggage arrives with you. Frankly I'm hoping that other airports around the world start using these things cause it just seems that it makes sense and they could avoid all the extra costs of having to track the missing luggage and flying it back to you. But alas I'm afraid that like with most good ideas, it will take far too long for this trend to spread.

However, when it does, you won't need to worry that on your next all important trip to Daytona Beach, Panama City Beach or Cancun, you'll be separated from your lucky "hook up" jammies.

Cyber Jock