I have traveled to the beautiful island of Capri with my daughter for the Capri/Hollywood Festival. When we arrived in Naples, my daughter and I, along with several dozen other holiday travelers discovered that our luggage was never going to emerge from the baggage carrousel. We gave descriptions of our luggage to the tremendously uninterested Alitalia employee. She gave me a reference number and pushed a paper in my hand shouting "Next!" I traveled to the Island feeling confident that in this day and age of bar-codes and security cameras that my bag was safe and would soon arrive. It has been three days now and when I speak with my hotels concierge, who has been calling the airline three times a day, and ask him, "Any news about my luggage?" he shakes his head and says, "Non lo so" (I don't know. Alitalia doesn't know where your bags are. Maybe they are back in NYC."
So, here we are in an age of taking our shoes and coats off for security. Removing liquids from our bags and not carrying any suspicious or sharp objects onto planes. All that post 9-11 security designed to make us safe. Our bags have our names on them. Our bags have barcodes to quickly identify them. If our bags are put onto the plane, and the passenger misses or doesn't board the plane, that persons bags are removed for security reasons. So how is it possible that luggage can just disappear? I went online this morning and entered the file reference number that I was given in Naples when I first discovered my missing bags. Guess what. The reference number that the unpleasant Alitalia employee gave to me is "invalid". So it is not the computers fault, but the human being who filed the number.
The point is, if Alitalia can't find luggage, are we really any safer today than pre 9-11? Or is all the airport screening and luggage X-rays B. S.? I think I have made up my mind.
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