Every have damaged baggage? You will love this.

14 July 2009, 04:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Very funny and a catchy song.

Not african travel per se, but checking expensive baggage in general.

True story.

Gotta love the internet.

15 July 2009, 02:25

Brice

I see that it's approaching 3,000,000 hits. Not that UAL gives a rat's ass. Perhaps someday Congress will seriously increase the limit of liability for such stuff.

15 July 2009, 12:16

jetdrvr

You'd have to look hard to beat Northwest. They destroyed a 1980's vintage Halliburton three-suiter that had been around the world and across oceans countless times on a flight from Regina via MSP to Orlando. That thing was gorilla proof. Or so I thought. And, of course, they are not responsible.

Northwest subcontracts baggage handling and in order to qualify for a position, one's knuckles must drag the ground whie standing erect.

15 July 2009, 20:12

ghostbird

This sounds all too familiar. Last year we were flying to Colorado for the opening of the elk muzzleloader season and as we waited in the terminal for our connecting plane (Delta) to be prepped the luggage cart showed up and the baggage handler started loading bags on the conveyor. We watched to hopefully see our gun and bow cases being loaded. The first bag coming off the cart that was not a suitcase happened to be golf clubs and the handler tossed it to the side on the tarmac... and I don't mean gingerly tossed it, he threw the dang thing. This was followed by every single gun and bow case. The suitcases were loaded on the conveyor, but the rest was thrown onto the concrete in a big pile. There were several other hunters in addition to our group and everyone was pissed. We got a Delta manager and complained and she got on the phone... shortly here come a couple of guys on the tarmac (obviously the handler's supervisor and his union shop steward). They talked to him and pointed up at the terminal windows. I'm sure the conversation went something like this "You big dummy, don't you know to throw the bags on the other side of the conveyor so the passengers in the terminal can't see them". Thankfuly nothing in our cases was broken.

16 July 2009, 00:32

jetdrvr

Think of it like this: the people who McDonald's won't hire get jobs as baggage handlers. "Ramp tramps", "ramp rats", "baggage apes." That's how they're known in the industry. As long as they work cheap, the airlines don't care.

16 July 2009, 01:26

OldHandgunHunter

quote:
Originally posted by Brice:
I see that it's approaching 3,000,000 hits. Not that UAL gives a rat's ass. Perhaps someday Congress will seriously increase the limit of liability for such stuff.

UAL would have been money ahead to treat this guy fairly and I'm betting that the customer service guy responsible will be wishing he'd been more reasonable sometime real soon.

We'll see, but this video is getting more traction than most of UAL's expensive advertisements and is likely not going over too well at the Corporate offices.

16 July 2009, 20:18

JPK

The video is a hoot!

JPK

17 July 2009, 19:46

DLS

quote:
Originally posted by ghostbird:
This sounds all too familiar. Last year we were flying to Colorado for the opening of the elk muzzleloader season and as we waited in the terminal for our connecting plane (Delta) to be prepped the luggage cart showed up and the baggage handler started loading bags on the conveyor. We watched to hopefully see our gun and bow cases being loaded. The first bag coming off the cart that was not a suitcase happened to be golf clubs and the handler tossed it to the side on the tarmac... and I don't mean gingerly tossed it, he threw the dang thing. This was followed by every single gun and bow case. The suitcases were loaded on the conveyor, but the rest was thrown onto the concrete in a big pile. There were several other hunters in addition to our group and everyone was pissed. We got a Delta manager and complained and she got on the phone... shortly here come a couple of guys on the tarmac (obviously the handler's supervisor and his union shop steward). They talked to him and pointed up at the terminal windows. I'm sure the conversation went something like this "You big dummy, don't you know to throw the bags on the other side of the conveyor so the passengers in the terminal can't see them". Thankfuly nothing in our cases was broken.

Same thing happened to me back in the 1980s in Sacramento, only bak then there was a door then that I was able to access to get onto the tarmace and go get the bastard. Fortunately for at least one of us, airline security stopped me before I got out on the tarmac. My case was broken, the guy threw it down that hard, so Frontier Airlines had to buy me a new case. I made a big stink about it, and the terminal manager agreed that they'd buy me a new case. Even a plastic gun case has to be thrown down hard to break the end open, so they knew something intentional had happened.

18 July 2009, 01:06

Fjold

UAL settled with the guy.

18 July 2009, 08:29

jetdrvr

I am leaving for TZ in about 14 hours on Northwest/KLM. Orlando to Detroit to AMS to Kili. I'm not sweating KLM. All I'm hoping for is that everything makes it as far as AMS intact. I have a real case of butterflies about my luggage. I ain't worried about the buffalo...well, not too much, anyway.

25 July 2009, 10:57

cjw

Getting to Africa with luggage is usually my biggest worry of the whole trip.

If you think you have luggage problems, watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCQtbLngkmM