TALES of LOST LUGGAGE...

So when it comes to luggage, I actually think I've been pretty lucky considering the amount of travel that I've done over my life and the amount of planes that I've been on. I am not a carry-on only traveler. I've never been a carry-on only traveler. I just have too much stuff in regards to camera gear. There's a lot of cameras and batteries and cords and laptops, et cetera, that I don't wanna check and takes up a lot of my carry-on space. Also, I don't like carrying just a lot of carry-on stuff because while I might be very lucky in terms of luggage, I'm not so lucky in terms of connecting times. I tend to run a lot between connecting flights. This is something that just, and also I just generally don't like lugging around a whole bunch of stuff with me through airports. So therefore, I do have checked luggage and pretty much all of these problems would not happen if I was carry-on only. So if you've ever had a delayed or a canceled flight, you might have experienced something called bag limbo. Now, bag limbo is when you've checked your bag but the airline can't release it from their system because you either don't have a new flight yet because your flight was canceled or your flight is just so far in the future that even if you wanted to get your bag out, they can't. Essentially, they cannot release your bag from the system. I don't know technically why that is so but you aren't getting your bag. Now, where this comes into place is overnight stays. Like if you are staying overnight in a hotel, which has happened to me multiple times where I've not been able to get my bag out of bag limbo because it's checked, even though I would like to, you know, shower, change my clothes, do all these things that you like to do when you're getting ready for a new day. So the first thing I do is I ask the airline for a toiletry bag. Sometimes they offer it up to you. Other times, you need to ask. Most airlines do have a complimentary toiletry bag that they will give you. So normally these bags contain a mixture of essentials such as toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant, and then you have other things such as a razor. It's not much, but it's enough to make you not stink. And then when you get back to the airport, they just recheck your bag and you're on your next flight. And this is the first reason of why you keep your luggage tag always when you are traveling because that is how they're gonna get your bag out of bag limbo and put it onto your next flight. Now, the second reason why you always wanna keep your baggage tag is lost bags. So when you've made it to your destination, but your bag has not. Now this has happened to me several different times on my travels. A few times when I'm heading toward a destination, that's my least favorite scenario. And a couple of times when I'm heading home, which I'm like, meh. So a couple of things that you do when you arrive at a destination, but your bag does not. The first thing is you go to the baggage counter, which is generally in the same area that you would collect your baggage in. And you make a claim where they will ask for your baggage tag. And they will ask you to identify your bag. I generally like colorful bags for this reason because it gives me that peace of mind that when I'm describing it, I'm like, yes, it is a yellow bag with a winky smiley face on it. They will know exactly which bag is my bag. Then it's a black bag about yay high. And it looks like a bag. So the next thing that generally has happened is I will just head to my hotel like when my bag was lost in Germany and I was going to a conference. I like to add in a little bit of a buffer day just to like one, recover from jet lag. The other thing is to just deal with if my bag is missing or just to shower, to put myself together. I had a very tight connection. And as we were taking a tight connection out of Vancouver, I was like, hey, is my bag gonna make it? And the airline lady said, yes, it is. Spoiler alert, the bag did not make it to Germany, but that's okay because I luckily in that case had a couple of friends I borrowed some clothes from. I went to the shops and I picked up some extra toiletries, some makeup, just so I could put myself together for a conference. So this is another great reason why you should get travel insurance because they will generally compensate you back for all the items that you need to buy. Sometimes the airlines themselves compensate you. I know in Europe, they have like a compensation system. This isn't true everywhere else in the world. Another thing they'll ask you for is your address because they will deliver it to your hotel or your accommodation when they have found your bag and fingers crossed that they have found your bag. But there is another situation though, when they can't find your bag and it's not in their system anymore. And that's because someone could have mistakenly taken your bag. So this happened to me when I flew into Auckland, New Zealand and I had my backpack that I had checked. And so I realized that after seeing my identical bag on the carousel still, that someone else had indeed taken my bag. Probably by accident because they looked exactly the same. The person who took my bag did eventually realize that they took my bag, they called the airline up but they didn't realize this till after they were at the hotel. And I unfortunately was just stopping over in Auckland for a night and I was heading down to the South Island through Wellington and then Wellington through Queenstown. I had many flights to go on. Trying to track a bag through many flights is a very tricky scenario. This is where I learned two very valuable lessons. The first one is the importance of identifiers. So colorful straps, luggage tag, stickers, anything that separates your bag, even if it's colorful, away from everybody else's. So if somebody accidentally grabbed it, they would know in like a few seconds, oh wait, that's not my bag and put it back. The second important thing that I learned was to not put personal effects in my checked luggage. And what I mean by this is I had put my diary, my journal, my notebook that contained all of my important information. Luckily, that person, I assume, didn't go through my bag. They realized it was not their bag and just returned it but they could have very well gone through it or if a malicious person had taken my bag, you know. So after a couple days of my bag following me throughout all of New Zealand, it did eventually end up in Queenstown and I was reunited with my bag but it was multiple days. If you're gonna be constantly traveling or if you're driving, like imagine if I was road tripping out to the middle of nowhere right after my flight. This is where lost luggage becomes a big pain in the butt. And then there were the times that my bag was damaged in transit. So it just came out with a new crack, a new bump, a dent. The wheels weren't working, the handle wasn't working, things had fallen off it. So the biggest thing to note is that when that happens is that you have to make a claim before you leave the airport. Generally, the airlines will compensate you if that does happen but you have to deal with it before you leave the airport, make a claim there and it helps if you have photos of the condition of the bag beforehand. This is why I always recommend to take a photo of your luggage. It doesn't have to be before every trip but to have a photo of the luggage that you have. This is again for identifying purposes and for if you need to make that claim because the airline had broken your luggage. So these are just some of the things that have happened to me with my luggage over my many years of traveling. I'm also curious to know what your guys' and gals' tales of lost luggage are. Let me know down below. I'm sure there are some wild ones out there because luggage just likes to get lost. It just happens. There's a lot of luggage floating around in the airline world. So let me know down below. Thanks again for watching. Don't forget to give this video a thumbs up. Hit that subscribe button if you aren't already. New videos coming out again in a few more days time and I'll see you guys again soon. Bye.