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In "true" lost baggage, I mean the loss of your baggage that is ultimately not returned to an owner and ends up in compensation.

According to the post here, the probability of the baggage being lost is 0.3%. However, this includes cases that the baggage is ultimately returned to the owner, which I assume consists of the most lost baggage occurences.

I would rather like to know how probable it is for you to lose your baggage completely. Is there any research or statistics on this area? Since the expected amount of money on compensation is ridiculously low in my humble opinion, I feel scared of this happening.

smci
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Blaszard
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    why are you scared of it happening specifically because the figures are low? That would mean it's less likely to happen... – Kate Gregory Mar 10 '17 at 17:39
  • I think that every country and airline must have a different probability and change in time. I myself have traveled twice to Mexico from Spain with British Airways, with a stop in London, four airplanes for the journey. One time I lost my baggage on the return at home. Well, my bag traveled a diferent route, going through several airports and hands. Finally, after 1 month, I recovered my bag; it was superficially damaged, with some cuts, and some stuff was missing. 25% lost in all trips 85% of things recovered from this total: 1.6666% baggage "true" lost – Orici Mar 10 '17 at 18:41
  • I am reminded of an old aphorism: 1 death is a tragedy, but one thousand deaths is a statistic. There's also the one about “it always happens to someone else unless it happens to you.” Ahem; anyways, do you want the probability so that you can weigh the chances against the ‘replacability’ value of your possessions, or are you looking to alleviate your fears by someone telling you that it is statistically improbable? – can-ned_food Mar 11 '17 at 00:40
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    @KateGregory Maybe you took "the reparation figure" as the probability of it happening? I meant the figure as the expected amount of money on reparation. – Blaszard Mar 11 '17 at 06:37
  • @can-ned_food The former. Ah, 1 death is also a statistic for me... – Blaszard Mar 11 '17 at 06:49
  • @Blaszard Maybe then you should also join those who never check baggage and only do carry on. I even sometimes lose stuff in my own house with nobody there with me. – Augustine of Hippo Mar 11 '17 at 07:06
  • @SheikPaul That is never possible for me as I travel all year round and I have too many to carry. Of course I should put as many variables as possible into my hand-in baggage, but can't carry many of bigger items (e.g. shoes, clothes) and cosmetics. – Blaszard Mar 11 '17 at 07:15
  • Bags get "lost" primarily because they loose their checked bag tag and the traveler didn't have any additional contact inside the bag. Put an extra tag with name and address inside the bag. Maybe even a list of your flights and pnr. The next biggest is theft. Travel101 - don't anything of value in your suitcase. –  Mar 11 '17 at 00:32
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    I don't understand exactly what you're scared of. Is it the possible monetary loss, or inconvenience, or irreplaceable items? You can always buy baggage/travel insurance if you want (although it may be unnecessary, or recourse-insurance, or you may already be covered by your credit card or some other policy). And you can photograph your case's contents while you're packing it in case you need to make a claim. Anyway, there are lots of more likely things that can go wrong on a trip, but lost and unreimbursed baggage is not one of the big ones. – smci Mar 11 '17 at 11:36
  • ^ At least in the developed world. Baggage theft (as distinct to accidental loss) is much more prevalent in certain airports of certain developing countries. Read the stats on that if it calms you down. – smci Mar 11 '17 at 11:48
  • Near-duplicate: Baggage theft rates – smci Mar 11 '17 at 11:49
  • @smci All of them. Travel insurances only cover a part of it, using their own criterion. Many items, especially clothes and shoes, are considered heavily deprecable. Suppose that you spent $12k on all of your clothes but if you lose it, the reparation is only a small amount of them, maybe $2k or something like that. Also, I travel all year round, so most insurances are not suitable for me. – Blaszard Mar 11 '17 at 12:15
  • By the way, passengers with frequent-flier status and business-class get treated much better. So the "true" probability of permanently-lost-baggage domestically in the US for frequent fliers like you is probably << 0.05%. As in, <1 in 2,000. And we can take it you label and TSA-lock the baggage. So then you either a) buy a second ticket so you get more carry-on allowance for your most valuable items b) keep a pair of shoes/ suit/ clothes in each city you visit frequently or c) just live with the tiny risk of having a loss in excess of insurance limit (AmEx insures up to $3K). – smci Mar 11 '17 at 12:45
  • Let me rationalize it to you like this: if this really was that much of a risk, more companies would be selling more insurance coverage for it, wouldn't they? You simply have to do a value-per-weight ratio triage on your luggage. Shoes, coat, suit, socks probably bulkiest. Beyond that, I still can't fathom how you could get $12K of shirts, pants and whatever in a 50lb suitcase. – smci Mar 11 '17 at 12:49
  • Actually, probably < 1 in 20,000, per @SheikPaul's numbers. You're more likely to get delayed, food poisoned, sick or mugged. Or your hotel room robbed. – smci Mar 11 '17 at 12:54
  • @smci I'm not a frequent flyer; I'm not rich, either. My travel style is usually stay in a country for a relatively longer period (2 to 10 weeks) and use AirBnB. However, the amount of clothes and cosmetics are relatively large, and I'm not rich enough to buy a second ticket or rent a space to hold them on. I asked it since I've been looking for a way to secure my clothes better. – Blaszard Mar 11 '17 at 13:00
  • Do a value-to-weight triage on the shoes and cosmetics, then. Smaller sizes, carry only what you need, buy more locally if you run out, order online to ship ahead to your destination; how much value and bulk can you cut out? $2K? 10lb? Give us numbers, please. Otherwise this is unanswerable. – smci Mar 11 '17 at 13:08

2 Answers2

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From the data available here which is sourced from Air Travel Consumer Report issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation, 0.021% of luggage is never found

The rate of mishandled bags dropped 21% to about seven per 1,000 passengers.The good news about lost luggage is that airlines worldwide eventually recover 97% of mishandled bags.Of all mishandled bags, 81% were simply delayed, 16% were damaged or pilfered and 3% were declared lost or stolen and never found.

0.007*0.03 = 0.00021 = 0.021% of the total......

JonathanReez
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Augustine of Hippo
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  • my math (if correct) says that number equals about two bags really lost per hundred thousand passengers. That is...really not much. – Megha Mar 10 '17 at 19:18
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    @Megha I think you're an order of magnitude off. 2 bags per 10,000 passengers. Still not many (though, it doesn't take into account bags that show a bit lighter...) – stannius Mar 10 '17 at 22:22
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    @stannius - well, there is a reason I made sure there was a disclaimer in my comment... I think I got the hundred thousand when I was looking for whole numbers of missing bags, as decimals usually don't go missing on their own, then decided .1 was near enough to round, and forgot to adjust back down. Thanks for catching it :) – Megha Mar 10 '17 at 22:42
  • IATA says there were 3.8 billion air travelers a year globally, of course not all of them checked bags which means as a grand total we are looking at a few hundred thousand bags altogether globally a year, which means we are looking at perhaps less than a thousand bags every day across the globe and we know there are more than a thousand airports since Star Alliance alone says they cover more than that which again means that on average less than 1 bag at an airport a day. –  Mar 10 '17 at 22:47
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    It's possible that some of the 0.021% includes people accidentally taking the wrong bag or airline employees accidentally checking in phantom bags. – JonathanReez Mar 10 '17 at 23:34
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    @stannius Your math is right. However 1 per 5,000 is too high probability for me... – Blaszard Mar 11 '17 at 06:57
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    So you'd have to fly 3300 times before you'd reach a 50% chance of losing a bag (.99979^x = 0.5). Suffice to say most of us won't be losing bags, thankfully. – JeopardyTempest Mar 11 '17 at 09:24
  • @Blaszard wait until you realize the odds of getting into a car accident: https://www.thrillist.com/cars/nation/how-likely-you-are-to-die-in-a-car-accident-in-every-us-state-the-most-dangerous-roads-in-america – JonathanReez Mar 11 '17 at 11:39
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    I think it is a rather odd metric, as with low cost carriers more and more people are travelling without checked in bags (so you get a better result even if you are missing the same number of bags). I wonder why don't they tell you the % of bags lost respect to the total number of bags checked in. – SJuan76 Mar 11 '17 at 13:59
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Also some data here: (and bonus - you may find your lost stuff ;)

Although over 99.5% of domestic airline’s checked bags are picked up at the baggage carousel, lost luggage is an unfortunate part of airline travel. The airlines conduct an extensive three-month tracing process with the remaining .5% of unclaimed bags in an effort to reunite them with their owners, resulting in an astonishingly small fraction of a percent of bags that are ultimately orphaned.

https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/about/

NKCampbell
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