April 19, 2007A few weeks ago, I was flying from Atlanta to Frankfurt, and had to check bags. Those of you who read or watch me regularly know I’ll do anything not to check bags… in fact, I WON’T check bags domestically — I courier them ahead of time.

But for overseas flights? I don’t have much of a choice.

To courier bags abroad is prohibitively expensive, so I check them. But what happens if something goes wrong overseas?

When my flight landed in Frankfurt, one of my bags was missing.

Uh-oh. That meant long lines at the airline bag office, filling out forms, and waiting for bag that might never show up. But what choice did I have?

I went to the Lufthansa office. There were about 20 people ahead of me in a long line.

That’s the bad news. But there were five agents in the office processing claims.

There was a small corner lounge in the office as well, and we were all encouraged to wait there and have a soft drink or coffee and Danish (coffee and Danish?).

When it was my turn — about eight minutes later (I timed it) — the agent could not have been nicer. He filled out the forms for me, asked where I was staying (at a nearby airport hotel) and studied his computer screen.

“I can tell you that your bag didn’t miss your flight. It is somewhere here at the Frankfurt airport, and we will find it within the next few hours.”

That was a relief. And then came the surprise: he opened a drawer, pulled out a crisp 100 euro note and said, “Please accept this with our apologies to handle any expenses you might have until we find your bag.”

Wow. And he did that with everyone on my line. That’s $140 for my inconvenience, and that’s after the airline was able to determine that my bag had not actually missed my flight…

I thanked him, and went to my hotel. 45 minutes later, there was a knock on my door. A bellman was delivering my bag. Talk about German efficiency.

And then, just a few days ago, I was on a Qantas flight from Los Angeles to Sydney, a 14-hour long haul marathon. Again, I checked bags.

The flight was late leaving Los Angeles, which presented a number of problems for some of my fellow passengers who were connecting in Sydney for other parts of the South Pacific. When we landed, my bags were there, but the connecting passengers were confronted with the news that if they hurried, they’d make their onward flights — but their bags would not.

And their bags would likely not catch up with them for 24 hours. Qantas agents were planeside to escort the connecting passengers to their flights, and again they presented these travelers with $100 bills to cover their interim expenses and inconvenience.

Talk about engendering good will. In both cases, I’d fly the airlines again, despite the baggage snafus.

Why? Because in the service business, it’s not how you deliver the service that makes the difference.

It’s how you recover. In each case, these airlines anticipated problems, adjusted quickly and responded in a positive, surprising way.

A lesson that U.S. airlines should learn and apply — but they won’t. Why?

Because they would never volunteer to initiate when it comes to paying out any kind of good will compensation. Unless there was an inflexible rule in place calling for substantial economic consequences in the event of lost or misplaced bags, no U.S. airline will ever score points the way Lufthansa and Qantas did.

And that’s a shame.

The moral of the story? I will gladly check bags for each of those airlines.

Which means, of course, that I will FLY those airlines! And that is just one example of the positive economic consequences that can happen when airlines think ahead.

For more on luggage problems, check out “Baggage Woes? Keep it Closed”.