GroundSupportWorldWide.com |

"With the drop in passengers, with the increase in checked baggage fees, we can't be sure if the number of mishandled bags is going down because of those two (factors) or truly because the industry is improving, or hopefully because of all three," says Catherine Mayer, a vice president at SITA, which provides information technology to the air travel industry.

It's rare for bags to be lost, never to be seen again. More often, they're delayed. Often when they are, the airlines say, it's because of missed connections, when a bag's owner makes it to a connecting flight, but the bag doesn't. There are other reasons for bags to go astray: Sometimes equipment misreads the bar code on a bag's tag. And sometimes luggage handlers place bags in the wrong cart headed to the wrong flight.

Using technology

Knowing few things irritate passengers more than having their bags misplaced, many airlines insist they're working to improve their delivery.

Delta, American and Southwest, for instance, have equipped employees with handheld devices that can scan the tag on a lone bag circling on a luggage carousel and speed the process to find its owner.

That's a piece of a $150 million commitment Delta Air Lines has made since 2008 to improve its overall baggage service, particularly in Atlanta, its largest hub, says spokesman Anthony Black.

"We've gone in and gutted the baggage system at the airport, put in wider bag lanes, new technologies and newer equipment and improved the processes we use to deliver bags to aircraft," he says.

Delta's rate of mishandled bags has fallen to 4.78 reports per 1,000 passengers for January through November compared with 5.69 during that period in 2008. Black calls that "the fruit of all those changes" the airline is making.