Qantas luggage lost: passengers in limbo

[Owen H]

Montague S,

Yes, I am one who will "bash" the media. I believe that the Media has a very cruicial role to play in society, and when I see the so called "journalistic standards" being destroyed by sensationalist reporting, and frequent intentional mis-reporting of facts, in a manner that could quite easily destroy a cruicial Australian institution for no reason whatsoever, then I believe that people need to start seriously questioning what is accepted.

Currently the media seem to have free reign to report whatever they want, with no right of reply or clarification. The journalists claim that they are the last check on how things are running in the country, and can expose bad situations. This is true, and why they are essential. But no-one is checking them. In the past, other media organisations would also act as a check on each other, ensuring some level of accuracy. With the reduction in different owners/operators this has disappeared, and now no-one is able to effectively monitor the media's activities.

The report could quite easily have been
"Hundreds of passengers had their bags left behind in Los Angeles last night due to a loading malfuction on the aircraft. Qantas put the bags on the next flight out of Los Angeles, and then sent a courier to their house with the bag as soon as it arrived, in order to minimise the disruption caused to the passengers", but that wouldn't sell newspapers.

Stephen B,

Usually, the airline hasn't lost the baggage at all, its just what people say has happened when their bag hasn't arrived. Bags very very rarely end up in a city that they aren't supposed to be in! In most situations, the bag location is known, its just not where it needs to be! (ie it never left the departure, or had to be loaded on a different aircraft). Unfortunately bags are often at the mercy of the local baggage handling system (especially bad internationally), which is handling millions of bags. When departure time is approaching, if they can't find your bag, then the flight is leaving without it. It has nothing to do with the airline... if you want to blame someone, blame the airport operators.

I'm not sure that an airline should put on a special flight just for your bags. Seems somewhat excessive... they are just bags. And yes, they will put them on a different carrier if its faster.