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Chinelo Obogo, [email protected]
Disembarking from an aircraft after a long flight and waiting to see your bag while other passengers have got theirs can create some very uncomfortable feeling. Its a feeling that can turn into frustration at the end of the day if it turns out that the luggage is delayed, damaged or the in the worst case scenario, missing.
On November 21, 2019, over 45 Nigerian passengers who boarded RwandAir flight WB305 from Dubai through Kigali, Rwanda’s capital landed at Murtala Muhammed International Airport only to get the shock of their lives.. After disembarking from the aircraft, they went to get their luggage from baggage collection area but as the hours went by, no luggage was forthcoming. By the end of the first day, they became despondent.
One of the passengers on the flight, (name withheld) said they flew in a 737-800 aircraft even though it was initially supposed to be an Airbus A320. The passenger said other passengers initially became apprehensive when on the date they were supposed to arrive Nigeria, the aircraft was diverted to Uganda over weather issues. At Uganda, a bigger aircraft, Airbus A320 WB305 was deployed to fly them to Nigeria. It was this transfer of aircraft that apparently made some of the passengers apprehensive that their luggage may have been lost in transit.
But the passengers eventually got their luggage back on November 23 after the Consumer Protection Department(CPD) of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) intervened to ensure that every passenger got his/her belongings back in one piece.
Break down of missing/delayed luggage for September 2019
Despite the fact that airlines and regulatory agencies have introduced new techniques for more efficient handling of luggage, the incidents of missing or delayed baggage hasn’t abated.
In the month of September this year, over 4,000 luggages belonging to passengers were either delayed on arrival or declared missing across 26 airports in the country. In a report published by Independent.ng which was obtained from NCAA’s Consumer Protection Department, foreign airlines flying in and out of Nigeria had the highest number of missing, delayed luggage.
According to the NCAA report, there were 4,097 reported cases of missing or delayed luggage on arrival among foreign airline operators, while domestic carriers had 29 of such incidences. Among them, 3,810 were later recovered, while 287 are still missing.
The breakdown of delayed/missing luggage reported in September 2019, shows Air France with 524, while British Airways had 487. Delta Air, 455, Royal Air Maroc and KLM had 438 each and Emirates had 364. Lufthansa, 208; Air Cote D’Ivoire, 28; Africa World Airline, 26; Asky Air, 84; Arik Air, 25; Ethiopian Air, 72; Ethiad, 9; Kenya Airways, 140; Meridiana, 49; Middle East Air, 28; Quatar Airways, 82; Rwandair, 172; South Africa Air, 96; Turkish Airline, 134; and Virgin Atlantic Air, 133.
How to handle luggage when traveling
When a passenger gets to an airline’s check-in counter, he hands over his luggage to the airline staff to check the weight. The luggage is weighed and a tag is placed on it to enable the owner identify it after which it is then placed on a conveyor belt that rolls it into a bag room where a more intensive search is carried out. This aspect is usually undertaken by the handling company, in this case, either Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (NAHCO) or Skyway Aviation handling Company Limited (SAHCOL) as the case may be. In more developed countries, a scanner is usually installed on the conveyor belts to scan the tag and direct the luggage to the carousel where the appropriate airline picks it up.
Many of the facilities at most of Nigeria’s international and local airports are antiquated as they conveyor belts have no scanners and in most cases, the ground handling staff have no option but to move the luggage manually into the bag room and directly into the carts.
Before the passengers begin to board, the luggage are brought out to the aircraft and a team of ground handlers either then commence loading them into the aircraft using a load plan which indicates how many bags go into each cargo compartment to get the right balance and weight.
When the plane arrives its destination, another team of ground handlers begin to offload the luggage from the aircraft into baggage carts which are moved with carousels and brought into the terminals where their owners wait to pick them up.
Why does luggage go missing?
From the point of entry to the time of movement of baggage from one point to the other as already illustrated, there is always bound to be human errors especially from the ground handlers who sometimes forget to carry luggage that are not cleared in time to leave with the appropriate flight.
There have also been occasions were ground handlers steal luggage. In 2013 for instance, over 12 staff of NAHCO were dismissed by the company for theft and other offences.
A senior executive in one of the major domestic airlines told Daily Sun that sometimes, passengers deliberately carry excess luggage and rather than shed the weight, they offer bribes to some of the airline staff responsible for weighing luggage.
“If for instance, the limit of the luggage an airline can carry per person is 20kg, many times, a passenger will come in with luggage weighing 30kg and instead of shedding the weight, they usually resort to offering airline staff bribe just to record a lesser weight for them. As it is common in every industry around the world, it is also not unusual to hear that some staff received money from customers to bend the rules.
“What these passengers do not realise is that they are only shortchanging themselves because by the time the luggage is being loaded into the cargo compartment and it is observed that a particular luggage is too large for the plane to carry, the airline simply bring out some of the heavier luggage from the aircraft back to the terminal. Most times they are transported to later flights. This is done by airlines all over the world but sometimes, some luggage gets missing in the process,” he said.
