T16GEM said:
If you have nothing to hide what's the problem? You never know one day a suitcase search could save your flight?? JMO.
The problem is - although probably very rare - if someone steals things from your case... even if you don't have anything of obvious value in your case. IF the thieves chose to steal something like a man's suit, an evening dress, hair straighteners, my nice underwear... It would still be frustrating and you would still probably like to claim off of your
travel insurance. This is quite rare (since most thieves want to steal something small of high value).
Also people rummaging through your belongings - for non-official reasons - are not likely to be neat enough to refold things after themsleves.
On a recent trip. British Airways "lost" our suitcase. We were flying direct from Heathrow to Denver. We checked in over 3 hours before the flight. We were flying business class (so supposedly "priority luggage"). Our two other pieces (skis and ski stuff) made it to Denver on the flight, our third piece (with all of our clothes in) didn't. No reason why, it just never got loaded onto our flight. In fact it took over 7 days to reach us (spent 5 of those just sitting on a rack at Heathrow!). It finally got delivered to us, by courier, at 00:15am (we had been asleep for 3 hours - the courier only warned us 5 minutes before he got there). That case had been one with a TSA lock on it. When we got it, the TSA lock was missing, the suitcase handle was broken, the case wasn't even fully zipped up AND the contents had DEFINITELY been rummaged through by someone. There was no note in it to say by who (it could have been TSA, it could have been customs, it could have been any airport employee, it could have been a courier...). If someone official (i.e. TSA/Customs/BA) had opened it, you would think that a note AND securing the suitcase by some means (instead of leaving the zip partly open) would have been appropriate?
Personally I find that very disturbing - all sorts of people could have had access to my luggage during it's journey. They could have taken something or planted something in it (drugs/explosives/whatever). AND there is NOTHING that you can do to stop/control it. Absolutely nothing.
Yes, I am happy for the TSA (or customs) to search the bags, BUT I believe that they should have a responsibility to leave a note and secure the bag suitably after they have searched it. They don't. I think that the manual searches are probably creating more "opportunities" than stopping them...
That was one of two suitcases that had their TSA locks missing. The second was coming home. I TSA locked it before checking it in at a Colorado regional airport. We flew AA from there to Chicago, then connected to a BA flight back to Heathrow. When the bag came out at Heathrow, the TSA lock was gone (no note, no zip tie, nothing).
Boo
