Luggage

It's a distressingly common scenario: You've successfully landed in your port of call. Your luggage, however, has hoofed it somewhere else entirely. Trakdot, a tracking device showcased at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, aims to make the snafu more bearable by knowing where your bags ended up.  The black and orange, GSM-equipped gadget is slightly larger than a deck of playing cards and powered by AA batteries. The idea is to chuck the Federal Aviation Administration-approved appliance into checked suitcases --it's programmed to power down once the aircraft it's on reaches certain speeds.

The stranded travelers are gone from Denver's airport, but piles of misdirected luggage remain, lost in the rush to get passengers through the snowbound airport. "We had bags that came without passengers, and passengers that came without bags," Frontier Airlines spokesman Joe Hodas said. Some passengers left their luggage behind in a rush to catch a standby flight or chose to leave the airport rather than wait for delayed bags, he said.

ONE of my favorite lost-baggage stories happened a few years ago. I was traveling from Boston to Nassau, Bahamas. The flight was nonstop, but the bags didn't make it. When I called the airline, they tracked the bags to Haiti. No problem, I was told; your bags will be put on the next flight. When the bags didn't arrive I was told by the airline that the bags would surely be on the next flight. When the bags still didn't arrive, the airline told me that they had missed the flight. Were they in the bar?

In response to "Luggage Lament," Louise Hauter's letter to the editor (Sept. 26): I would much prefer to check everything--but with luggage being lost and pilfered, it won't happen. I can handle the wait at baggage claim, though sometimes it seems forever. The business traveler can't or won't. No easy answer. BETTIE T. ROMAN West Hills I've never had a fish fall on my head, but my luggage was placed in the lavatory for take-off and landing on an Air France flight to Paris.

Missing luggage containing documents that chronicle a Japanese family's fight against black racism in their country has been recovered, Los Angeles officials said Friday. Bags containing journals and videotapes detailing the campaign led by the family of Toshiji Arita were found in a trash bin near Los Angeles International Airport, a spokeswoman for Mayor Tom Bradley said.

Scotland Yard said Thursday that undercover police have arrested 23 baggage handlers for looting passengers' suitcases at Heathrow Airport, dubbed "Thiefrow" because of suspected multimillion-dollar luggage pilfering at the world's busiest airport. The five-month operation was the second in which authorities have broken up employee theft rings at the airport.

"Air Travelers Urged to Unlock Bags, Opening Liability Issue" (Dec. 20) missed the most serious risk facing air passengers who either voluntarily fly with unlocked checked bags or who have their locked bags unlocked outside their presence: the risk that contraband or stolen items may be placed in the bags. I annually fly to Europe or the Caribbean with checked luggage whose value far exceeds the outdated international treaty limits for lost bags. I can protect myself from the risk of theft from my luggage by packing any items of significant value in my carry-on or leaving them at home.

It's an open-and-shut case of automation at United Air Lines' baggage-handling operation at Los Angeles International Airport, where at the peak of the current holiday travel season, about 20,000 pieces of baggage are processed daily (compared to the usual 12,000 to 14,000 pieces).

If the airlines lost your luggage last year, you are among a few unlucky passengers. Very few. During 2012, the nation's largest airlines reported the lowest rate of lost or mishandled luggage since federal officials began keeping the data in 1987. For the year, the nation's airlines had a rate of 3.09 lost or damaged bags for every 1,000 passengers, compared with the rate of 3.35 bags in 2011, the U.S. Department of Transportation reported Tuesday. Some airline critics have suggested that the rate of lost luggage has been declining because passengers carry fewer bags to avoid the check-luggage fee that most airlines introduced in the past four years.

Want a fur pouch messenger bag from Weird Al Yankovich or a briefcase signed by Donald Trump? Celebrity luggage and baggage went on the auction block Tuesday in a special sale aimed at raising money for charity and sponsored by JetBlue Airways . More than 50 celebrities, from actors to athletes and designers, donated items for the airline to sell. Two round-trip tickets on JetBlue come tucked inside the luggage too. Bidding on items in the Celebrity Baggage Auction started Tuesday on Ebay and will continue until Monday.