only found 6 of 7 checked bags today...

[kdonnel]

Who is in charge of the new "security" at MCO?

The ticket counter near AirTran and SouthWest is a joke. Today at around 10:00am there were several hundred people in line for each airline.

After waiting forever to get to the front they check you in and and tag your bags. At that point you have to carry your bags back about 15 feet through a couple hundred people moving in every direction. You carry the bags back to the bomb machine and pray that the TSA employees actually grab your bag and send it through.

Six of our seven bags made it through. The seventh is lost who knows where. The bad part is the seventh bag was the one that contained ALL the souviners we bought at WDW, all of our clean clothes (5 or so short and shirt pairs for 3 people), the bulk of my daughters Gymboree clothes, ALL our DVD's, ALL the clothes my wife bought at the outlet, the way overpriced picture's we bought of our arrival to the parks....and who knows what else I haven't remembered yet.

Airtran has been real polite about it but no bag yet. The real bad part is it appears to have made it through security without being tagged to a destination. In the mass confusion at MCO we ended up with just 6 baggage tags. They are not even in sequential order so they can't even make a good guess as to the bag number.

Does anyone know how long we have to wait before we get to make the airline pay up? A rough addition puts the contents at around $1500. What are the limits?

I don't even blame AirTran. I blame the idiot who put the bomb machines in front of the ticket counters. They should be behind the counters. Once your bags are checked they should stay checked. You should not have to move them to another location. I really believe that the baggage process at MCO is actually less secure and safe then it was prior to 9/11.

 

[Chuck S]

Is this something new that all the airlines are doing at MCO? We flew Delta in December, just after TSA took over security, and we just dropped our luggage with a skycap like always, no problems, except our bags were on a later flight than we were (there were weather issues in Atlanta).

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

Originally posted by Chuck S
Is this something new that all the airlines are doing at MCO? We flew Delta in December, just after TSA took over security, and we just dropped our luggage with a skycap like always, no problems, except our bags were on a later flight than we were (there were weather issues in Atlanta).

I did the same Chuck, and my bags arrived at the same time I did. One more reason to part with the few bucks and tip the skycap.

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

Does anyone know how long we have to wait before we get to make the airline pay up? A rough addition puts the contents at around $1500. What are the limits?

go to the airtran website and read their terms of carriage, that should answer your questions. Please tell me your name and address are somewhere on or in that bag.

 

[seashoreCM]

You should have filed a claim against the airline before leaving the airport upon arrival.

Did you hand the bags to a person or just leave them in a pile?

It is not a good idea to leave bags unattended in public, even going back out to the skycap is a good idea.

Disney hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/disney.htm

 

[kdonnel]

Originally posted by seashoreCM
You should have filed a claim against the airline before leaving the airport upon arrival.

Did you hand the bags to a person or just leave them in a pile?

It is not a good idea to leave bags unattended in public, even going back out to the skycap is a good idea.

Disney hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/disney.htm

I filed a missing bag report with the airline before leaving the Atlanta airport to head home.

My name and address was on the bag in atleast two locations.

The ticket counter agent was checking three peoples bags at the same time. I imagine mine was tagged to go to who knows where.

I handed the bags to the TSA person that was creating a pile of 200 to 300 bags. There were about 200 or 300 bags waiting to go through the bomb machine.

Technically they were not unattended. There were TWO TSA employees handling all the baggage for AirTran and SouthWest. Yet TSA is cutting back on the number of employees.

I am telling you the procedures at MCO stink.

Congress mandated the use of the bomb machines but did not consider that the airports were designed without the space for the machines.

MCO is digging out a hole in their basement to install the machines properly. Until then they are operating in a really inefficient manner.

 

[DebbieB]

I curbside checked at USAirways yesterday, same as the old days. Then returned the rental car and got our boarding passes from the e-ticket kiosk.

Our airport in Pittsburgh has a system similiar to how you described. You have to get them tagged at either the e-ticket kiosk or regular counter and then haul them over to the x-ray machines. Then go to regular security with your carry-ons.

 

[safetymom]

I just returned from MCO yesterday. We did curbside check in with USAirways and no problems. Then returned the car.

 

[GoldenOldie]

Originally posted by kdonnel
...Does anyone know how long we have to wait before we get to make the airline pay up? A rough addition puts the contents at around $1500. What are the limits?...

Airline liability for lost baggage on domestic flights is $2500. Most airlines consider 90 days the point at which it is officially declared lost forever. Keep in mind that the airline will do exactly what an insurance company does in the event of a loss. They will depreciate the value of your items. So your $1500 value can easily get knocked down to $400-$500.

One thing that will help is if you have the receipts from WDW for all those souvenirs that were in the bag. That way they are forced to value those at a higher rate than they will for your clothes and other items for which you don't have a receipt.

Once you and Air-Tran settle, contact the credit card company that you used to purchase the plane tickets. Many often include some reimbursement coverage for free when you have charged the ticket to their card.

Check with your homeowners insurance, too.

Good luck!

 

[CarolA]

The real problem here is NOT the TSA. The problem is that you have NO proof you ever had the bag checked. As I read this you only have 6 bag claim tickets and 7 bags. Now I assume that all 6 tickets matched the six bags you received. Bag number 7 is PROBABLY still in Orlando, but finding it is going to be horrible. The airlines all use computer scan tags to track your luggage and your's is not scanned or tracked.

I know it does not help you, but folks make sure the number of claim checks the gate person gives you equal the number of bags you checked!

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

I know it does not help you, but folks make sure the number of claim checks the gate person gives you equal the number of bags you checked!

Good advice, Carol, we always do, we count them, watch them attach the destination tags to the bags, make sure they have the correct code for the arrival airport and since the little luggage claim tickets are printed at the same time, I make sure they are properly attached to my ticket folder thingie. (actually the skycap usually points this out too.) Blaming the placement of a bomb detector is not a good excuse for not counting your baggage claim tickets.
One good thing, they have their name and address in the lost bag, that will help, and, hopefully, they will recoup their bag soon.

 

[kdonnel]

Still no luck today.

Airtran did call today and said that their lost bags percentage has increased 56% since the bomb machines were placed where they are at MCO.

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

Here's hoping for better news soon. I think the problem would occur anywhere the machine was installed. Is this a 56% increase overall or only with Airtran?

 

[kdonnel]

It's with Airtran at MCO. They have compalined to the TSA about the current baggage procedures. They lump all the Southwest and Airtan luggage together to go through the machine and then the TSA employees separate the bags out to go the right way. They tend to misdirect alot of SouthWest baggage onto Airtran and Airtran baggage onto SouthWest.

What happened to the idea of 100% bag match? Shouldn't we be flying with our own baggage and not someone else's?

 

[safetymom]

I know that USAirways does bag match. We sat in the plane while they tried to find someone that should have been on the plane. When it was obvious that he wasn't it took them almost an hour to retrieve his suitcase from the baggage compartment.

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

SWA bag matches also. I fly SWA exclusively and have yet to have a problem.
I have one question and please, don't take this as an attack, but, why, when you noticed that you only had 6 claim tickets and knew you had 7 bags did you not say anything at the gate, or.. was it a case of not noticing until later?
As I said before, this make it more of a concrete reason why I use curbside check in, the skycap takes your bags and you don't see or handle them again until you hit your destination. Most definitely worth the tip and the time saved.

 

[CarolA]

I think that bag matching was not a problem. As far as I can tell this bag was potentially never tagged. So it is probably still in Orlando trying to find a home.

 

[kylara]

Yikes, if they have combined Air Tran and SWA together at the TSA machine then I can just see the back-ups they must be having. I flew out of MCO on Air Tran in March and they had all Air Tran going over to the x-ray machine and all SWA being done on one smaller machine and by open bag inspection. It was tight in the area and made the lines very long.

At that time Air Tran was not allowing any curbside check in..they were not set up for it. And didn't think they would be until the x-ray machine is moved behind the scenes.

But when we checked in...and there was a group of 10 of us. The Air Tran check-in made sure that we all had out luggage tagged and that we verified our claim checks. Then we were directed to bring them to the TSA people who made room in the pile for all of them.

I hope they are able to find your luggage. If it indeed ended up not being tagged at check-in, hopefully they will find it at MCO still.

 

[kdonnel]

In their system they have us having checked 7 bags.

They actually print out a bag tag with bar codes and attach an airtran tag. The printout out is attached to the bag somewhere.

In the zoo that was checkin we did not check to make sure we had a tag for each bag stapled to our boarding pass. We were glad to just be leaving. I know that I carried that bag to the xray machine and that every bag I carried to the machine had a bar code tag.

As someone else mentioned the area is real tight and with the cruise ships just in there were way to many people for the area.

I would have thought that both Airtran and the TSA would realize by now that every Saturday and Sunday there are an extra few thousand cruise ship passengers and their associated luggage. Neither seemed prepared for the crowd of people.

When I was renting the car the agent for the car rental asked when we would be returning the car. Our flight was at 11:30 so I said 9:30. She recommended getting there at least 4 hours prior on Saturday or Sunday because of the mess every weekend.

I think it ended up going somewhere else. It will probably be a long time before they find it, if at all.

At least it was at the end of the trip.

Nothing in there was irreplaceable.