Three Christmases ago, Ute Cowan and her family spent two weeks in Berlin. Her luggage had other plans.
Upon landing at the German airport from New York, the bag with holiday gifts appeared on the carousel, but the beige suitcase with her clothing did not. Nor did it arrive a week later, when Lufthansa delivered her children’s waylaid luggage to her German mother’s home. About 10 days after their trip, her bag appeared on her Connecticut doorstep like the family cat returning from a secret adventure.
“All of a sudden the doorbell rang and this person was outside with my suitcase,” said Cowan, a photographer and mom of two. “It was so mysterious. I have no idea where it was that whole time.”
Sweater, boots and holiday season is almost upon us, a time of year when travelers swap their compact carry-ons, sized for light summer essentials, for more spacious checked luggage that can accommodate heavy clothes and bulky gifts. Despite the airlines’ concerted efforts to reduce the number of mishandled bags, thousands of checked suitcases still slip through the cracks monthly.
In the first six months of this year, nine domestic carriers mishandled 1.1 million pieces of luggage out of roughly 226 million “enplaned” bags, according to the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The figure is a smidgen better than the same period last year, with 1.2 million out of about 234 million bags lost, damaged, delayed or pilfered.
“We have better tracking and more timely delivery compared to 20 years ago, but an opportunity for improvement remains,” said Gary Leff, founder of the travel blog View from the Wing.
Over the years, airlines have introduced innovations to keep tabs on bags, including radio-frequency identification (RFID), a form of wireless communication, and artificial intelligence. More incentive than invention, Delta and Alaska offer a baggage guarantee: If your luggage lands in baggage claim more than 20 minutes after the plane’s arrival, the airlines will compensate with miles or a future credit.
“When they fail at that, they’re turning off customers and building up negative reputational equity,” Leff said.
Travelers, meanwhile, can adopt strategies to lower the risk of mishandled luggage — or at least avoid wearing their plane clothes for multiple days.
After her luggage debacle, Cowan now diversifies her packing, dispersing her family’s clothes and gifts among several bags. And this holiday, she won’t have to stress over checked bags, because her mother is coming to her.
Who’s to blame for mishandled bags?
Airlines are the primary caretakers of checked luggage, from beginning (check-in) to end (baggage claim) to encore (delivering delayed bags).
A checked bag’s journey typically starts at the check-in counter or bag drop, where the carrier tags the bags with a bar-coded label containing flight information that an automated reader can decipher. Next, it travels by conveyor to the Transportation Security Administration screening area. (The agency receives hundreds of passenger complaints a year about tampered-with bags, including missing items and busted locks or zippers.) Once cleared, it moves to a sorting staging ground where baggage handlers transport the luggage to the finish line, the airplane’s loading area.
Rich Leary, a senior aviation program manager at civil engineering firm HNTB, which specializes in transportation projects, said snags often occur at transfer points. When devising an airport’s baggage-handling circuit, Leary said designers pay close attention to these jags in the journey.
“The challenge areas are wherever a bag is transitioning from one system to another,” Leary said.
Some innovations can help smooth out the kinks. One promising new feature, Leary said, is the Individual Carrier System, which places each bag into its own RFID-tagged bin, like a private chariot for your luggage.
“If we’re dealing with large volumes and distances, this helps with the handling of the bag and the accurate tracking of the bag,” he said.
According to Leary, airport size alone does not necessarily determine whether bags are delayed or misdirected, because the aviation industry shares the same “design and operational principles.” However, Leff said layout can make a difference, especially on connecting flights at airports with interterminal distances as vast as an African veld. Take, for example, Dallas-Fort Worth International, American Airlines’ largest hub.
“If your connecting bags are going from terminal A to E or E to D, that is more complicated than if everything stays in one area,” he said.
If you must check bags, consider the scale and busyness of the airport when booking your trip. Also, take into account weather and holiday traffic.
In a Travel Bulletin study of mishandled luggage, data scientist and researcher Josh Koebert determined that winter, with its snowstorms and surge in holiday travel, is no friend of checked bags. July was the most addled month in 2024 and 2025, but December and January were close behind.
“December, January and July are far and away the worst months, where the most bags get mishandled or lost,” Koebert said. “The amount of people at the airport spikes and the amount of bags being checked spikes, and this puts more pressure on baggage handlers and airline and airport systems. It makes it a lot harder to make sure that everything gets to the right place.”
Though it can be impossible to avoid winter holiday travel, AAA says to avoid peak days, such as the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving (Nov. 24-25 this year, plus the Sunday after) and Dec. 19-23 for Christmas.
Employ bag-tracking apps and other tools
In 2019, the International Air Transport Association announced worldwide support of RFID to track bags. It also advocated for “messaging standards” that can pinpoint a bag’s positions in real time.
“Under the resolution, airlines committed to transition from bag-coded baggage labels to baggage labels including RFID inlays in addition to the existing barcode,” the association stated. “Airlines also committed to using the RFID data provided to proactively identify mishandled baggage and enact processes with airports and ground handlers that prevent mishandling.”
Many airlines have adopted this technology, including Delta, Air New Zealand and Alaska Airlines. Other carriers, such as United, use it at select airports. Some are still holding out, such as American, the carrier with the highest rate of mishandled bags.
A growing number of airlines — Delta, American, United, JetBlue and Southwest, among others — are placing tracking tools in passengers’ hands. Through the Track My Bags feature, travelers can follow the whereabouts of their bags on the airline’s app or online. Passengers can also double up on tracking devices and attach their own AirTag or similar gadget to their luggage. If you thought spying on your kids on a Friday night was fun, just imagine the thrill of trailing your luggage across several continents.
Though these technologies can share the location of your gallivanting bag, they don’t necessarily keep your bag on track. Some simpler analog strategies, however, can.
For one, remove all luggage stickers and barcode tags from previous flights. Book nonstop flights. If you must connect, make sure you have a long enough layover — anywhere from 60 minutes to two hours, depending on the airports and routes — for the airline to transfer the luggage to the next flight.
If your bag goes missing, be prepared. Pack essentials and valuables in your carry-on, plus a change of clothes. Take photos of your luggage and its contents. File a report with the airline while still at the airport, and ask the carrier and your credit card about reimbursement coverage for the replacement or lost items. And finally, take a beat to determine whether the airline actually misplaced your bag or if other forces were at play.
On a trip to St. Kitts, Leff’s bag did not materialize on the carousel. He eventually found it in the customs line with another passenger. It was a clear case of mistaken identity.
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