Jaunted - Tag: Lost Luggage

Lost Luggage Drama Drops for Rachel Zoe in St. Barts

kjb — 2012-01-02T10:14:34-05:00

When you’ve got loads of designer clothes that just need to get there on time, we’d probably recommend carrying on. Unfortunately for Rachel Zoe—famous for dressing celebs and her The Rachel Zoe Project show—checking things was apparently the only option, and now she’s missing all kinds of stuff.

The stylist to the starts was heading to Miami and then on to St. Barts to celebrate the holidays and took to the skies aboard American Airlines thinking that everything would go swell. She was wrong, and now like a week later all her stuff is missing somewhere in the maze of baggage carts, conveyor belts, and handlers in the American Airlines system. Her Gucci jackets and Missoni goods are nowhere to be found, and she’s taking to Twitter to complain about it.

The Incandescent Incompetence of US Airways' Outsourced Baggage Recovery Call Center

Omri — 2011-01-14T18:08:49-05:00

Catch the first half of this lost luggage drama here!

To recap: Last Sunday, US Airways shuffled us through 16 hours, 4 flights, and 2 different airlines to get from LA to DC. The trip was a comedy of incompetence, capped off by the airline losing our holiday-gift-filled luggage. That was extra obnoxious insofar as we specifically asked for the simplest itinerary when we were getting rerouted up and down the East Coast, explicitly because we couldn't afford to lose that bag. But that's not what this post is about.

Instead this story is about how US Airways has seemingly gone out of its way to design the world's worst baggage recovery customer service system. Some of the post is necessarily speculative, since the airline's press office declined to respond to our questions about the location and scope of US Airways' baggage recovery call center. But given how we've personally spent over 100 hours on the phone now with these tools trying to recover our one lost bag, we're pretty confident we've got the basics down.

Here we go...

Travel Rant: US Airways' Incandescent Incompetence with a Single Checked Luggage

Omri — 2011-01-12T15:31:07-05:00

Some old school US Airways planes

Who doesn't love a good travel rant? Well we're here to make you day with a sweet little rant from Jaunted writer Omri, who had the pleasure of checking a bag and having it lost in transit. It sucks, sure, but then it became a nightmare. Now let's get to the ranting...

Welcome to Part I of our two-part series on the borderline comedic but mindblowingly frustrating experience we're having with US Airways. Last Sunday they were supposed to get us from Washington DC to Los Angeles on a couple of morning flights, with everything being wrapped up by about 10am. Fast forward to 7:30pm Sunday night and we've gone through four flights at three airports on two airlines, all over 14 hours...and the airline lost our luggage. The emphasis is on lost because—had they merely delayed our luggage—we wouldn't need two different posts to peel back the many layers of airline incompetence on display.

But we do need two posts, because this has been such a learning experience and—if we here at Jaunted are about anything—we're all about learning. So today we'll go over what happened and the things we learned about the airports we "visited." And on Friday we'll dive into our in-depth investigation of their baggage recovery policy, complete with stonewalling by US Airway's press people. Preview: outsourcing baggage recovery services to India is fun for everyone, except anyone who loses baggage.

American Airlines Loses Supermodel's Luggage, Including Her Wedding Dress

JetSetCD — 2010-11-10T09:00:36-05:00

There are some times, when you're a celebrity, when it's totally worth it to pony up the extra cash and just got with a private jet. We bet rock god Alice Cooper learned this lesson when British Airways lost the luggage containing his gruesome props for a London show, and now it's supermodel (and Victoria's Secret Angel) Miranda Kerr's turn. The Aussie beauty married Orlando Bloom earlier this summer, and wore a vintage wedding dress, which is now somewhere lost in American Airlines' system.

It's a bit late for her to reach out for help on this matter months and months later, but she reached out on Facebook to ask her fans about their experiences with lost luggage on American. We're going to borrow the powers of Captain Hindsight here to say that her decision to check her luggage, with her vintage Collette Dinnigan-designed dress inside, was a bad idea in the first place.

British Airways Loses Alice Cooper's Luggage, Fake Blood and All

JetSetCD — 2010-11-01T09:09:15-05:00

Do you know why heavy metal legend Alice Cooper is so sad? It's because British Airways lost his luggage, a precious cargo of fake blood and other gory props destined to be a part of his "Halloween Night of Fears" show in London. Frankly, we're surprised he's traveled so easily all these years without encountering lost baggage problems, especially considering what he usually packs. Says RTT News:

...Airport officials were taken aback when Cooper detailed the contents of his misplaced luggage. The pieces reportedly contained fake blood used to simulate Cooper's death on stage along with an oversize needle, bones and skulls.

US Airways Loses Luggage Filled with $50,000-Worth of Gucci Heirlooms

JetSetCD — 2010-09-24T09:01:54-05:00

Have you had your bag lost by the airlines one too many times? Join the club! It's a club that now includes Giorgio Gucci, heir to the luxury brand Gucci and recent victim of shoddy baggage handling. Gucci flew into Philadelphia from Madrid and continued down to Washington DC a few days ago, in order to appear before Congress during their discussions of counterfeit goods. His baggage didn't follow him. US Airways lost it, but you see this isn't any regular old baggage, it's $50,000-worth of historical Gucci items.

The luggage contents, including Gucci bags handmade by his grandparents, custom suits for his Congressional appearance and hundreds of family photos, were to be used in the filming of a documentary about Gucci's life. We're betting he was traveling with Gucci luggage as well, and perhaps some baggage handler thought the luxury case too delicious to let pass by. As a result of the missing baggage, Giorgio had to rush to buy a cheap suit for his big day at Congress.

Have You Seen the New York Times' iPod Nano They Lost on a Plane?

JetSetCD — 2010-05-24T12:43:32-05:00

Hey, United Airlines, you've got the New York Times' blue iPod nano and apparently you're not giving it back!

Earlier this month, a New York Times online writer lost said iPod on her flight from Philly to San Francisco, and she's devoted so much time to attempting to retrieve it through the appropriate channels that it deserved a story. We've tried to tell air travelers that once something is left onboard a plane—something that isn't as important to travel as a passport, say—it's as good as gone. Think of it as like leaving something in a taxi cab, but a taxi cab with a nationwide fleet.