Travel Detective on Lost Luggage, Empty Bladders & How to Avoid Being Breakfast for a Bear

Plane Taking OffAt long last, there is good news for travelers regarding airline bags.

The Department of Transportation has said that the airlines can no longer arbitrarily limit reimbursement when you have to replace necessities when they lose your bags.

A number of airlines—and you know who you are—have policies saying they will only reimburse you for necessities purchased more than 24 hours AFTER you arrive without your luggage. Now how ridiculous is that?

It also limits payments to outbound trips, meaning customers foot the bill for items lost on the flight back home.

Well, the DOT says now that these policies violate federal rules which require airlines to cover all expenses caused by loss or delayed baggage up to $3,300 per passenger. That means good news for travelers. For one, they can’t deny you a toothbrush and toothpaste, and they can’t deny buying you at least one shirt. But remember, it’s based on depreciated value, so there’s a lot of wiggle room there.

Take an in-depth look at the changes with DOT Steps Up Enforcement on Airline Compensation for Lost & Delayed Luggage. Or learn more in our Luggage & Packing Help section.

Plane flyingNow for some bad news. How much money is the airline/airline industry earning from charging you to check your bag? It’s gotten to the point where it is now in the billions of dollars in ancillary revenue.

In fact, airlines are now receiving 4 percent of their operating revenue from baggage fees! That is huge. Another part of that of comes from charging passengers who make reservations—imagine this—while talking to a human being.

This past weekend, I broadcast my radio show from the Paws Up Resort in Montana. Looking out the window, I could see a vast expanse of the valley where they have every kind of animal imaginable.

And since we were on the border of Glacier National Park, I though I would share the rules of how to avoid becoming bear breakfast:

  1. Don’t surprise them
  2. Don’t approach them
  3. Don’t feed them
  4. Be afraid

And then there is the Stupid Travel News of the Week award. How far will an airline go to save money and further alienate customers?

ANA planeJapan’s All Nippon Airways is asking passengers to literally “lighten their load” before boarding on select flights. They are asking their passengers to make that last trip to empty their bladders before boarding. Why this would be on “select flights” is beyond me. Can you believe this?

Leave it to the Japanese, who really did their homework on this one. They realized the human bladder can hold up to 16 ounces of urine before the urge to urinate.

They calculated 216 passengers on a Boeing 767 with full bladders which is an additional 1.1 pounds of fluid. So they just saved 240 pounds. Don’t you feel better now?

And that’s just number one. I’m not even going to talk about number two, although that might come up again by the end of this year. That’s because there’s Ryanair out there in Europe trying to install $1.50 pay toilets on the plane.

Ryanair logoWhen that happens, watch out. There will be outright rioting when someone can’t get through the line or doesn’t have enough spare change.

One more piece of good news. We broadcast show a few years ago on a Lufthansa A330
going from Frankfort to JFK, when they had great in-flight wireless on the plane.

They took it off, but three years after unplugging it, Lufthansa is putting it back in—a new and improved in-flight wireless on most long-distance flights by the first half of next year. And when they do that, guess what?

We’ll be back, literally on the air … in the air.

By Peter Greenberg for PeterGreenberg.com.

Listen to recent and archived episodes of Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio here.

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