How I found the bag (Day 1 and 2)

Day 1 (Aug 10):

Flight: LAX->JFK->LHR
Flight from LAX to JFK was delayed due to bad weather in New York and I only had 10 min to run 30 gates at JFK to make my flight. I don't recommend running ever before a flight (but then who would want to run unless he/she has to...). I was panting for like 10, 15 mins on the plane. I felt dehydrated throughout the flight (even though I requested and was given water several times), couldn't sleep, and couldn't breathe comfortably because of the low humidity in the cabin.

Day 1 is short due to time difference between the West Coast and London.

Day 2 (Aug 11):

After washing up in the hotel, I took the tube to Heathrow Terminal 4. After I got there, the information desk people told me to ring up British Airways baggage service. I called with their phone, explained that I came all the way from LA and would like to look at the tagless bags since my missing bag is most likely to be tagless. He said I couldn't look at the tagless bags and shouldn't be here, but then he still let me in through the security check.

Once inside the baggage claim area, I was told to head to the baggage report area (I think many of us here know this area very well). I talked to the BA staff ("A") and he told me that most of the tagless bags are in a hangar, which is a restricted area that I couldn't go to. He said that in the evening (around 10pm), the night staff would have more time to bring the tagless bags from the hangar to process them and I would be better off coming back at night. According to "A", about 200-300 tagless bags were processed daily. There were tagless bags inside the baggage claim area, about 100 of them, by a wall and inside the room behind the BA baggage report area. I then walked around the baggage claim area and couldn't see my bag. I asked to go to the room behind baggage report area (cos the door was open and i saw many bags in there) and was allowed to do so.

Pic 1- the room behind the baggage report area:



Inside the room, I saw about 70 tagless bags, none of them mine. I talked to another BA staff ("B") in the room and he helped me look for my bag on their computer system. He saw that my bag's tag number was scanned and found in Brussels airport on July 17 but no further info was available beyond that point. And looking at another system, it stated that my bag was scheduled to be on a flight from BRU to LHR on July 17. But LHR never scanned the arrival of my bag on the 17th. "B" thought it would be still in Brussels and helped me to send another telex to BRU. According to "B", there were thousands of tagless bags in the hangar.

I was also asked to describe the contents of my bag for BA to match with the tagless bags. I said that I had been sending telexes describing contents of my bag for 2 weeks now and they should have that description on system. But the system didn't and I gave them the description again. This was very frustrating as LHR didn't have my description of the contents despite all the calls we made. 2 weeks of telexes and bag-contents matching possibility seemed to be totally wasted.

I came back to the baggage claim area at 9pm. Talked a very helpful staff ("C") and he explained in details how tagless bags were processed and matched with bag descriptions from owners (but I had to fly to London to properly enter my bag description into their system, very exclusive). "C" estimated that 500-600 tagless bags were in hangar. I will explain how BA processes tagless bag in a different post. I went into the room behind the baggage report area and saw about 10 tagless bags I didn't see earlier that day, again none of them mine.

Staff there told me that they were only going to process the bags I saw in the baggage claim area (there were 50+ left behind baggages from the day, all needed to be entered into the system). So obviously they couldn't process 200-300 tagless bags a day. I felt that it's more like 60 per bags on non-busy days. And they could always be busy since BA keeps losing bags. This was not going anywhere, I even offered to help them so they could process more tagless bags for the night, and possibly get to my bag.

Then I got kicked out at 11pm. No more flight coming in and customs would start clearing the area. Fine, it was customs kicking me out, not BA. But BA staff ("A") in the afternoon told me to come back at 10pm. He thought 1 hour was long enough? Or was he trying to make me go away and have me come back with little time to bug them?

Day 2 was very frustrating. I couldn't get a chance to see all the tagless bags. I felt like BA was hiding them from the world. Information from staff could be very conflicting. Plus my nose was bleeding the whole day from the dry air on the planes in Day 1.

More to come: Days 3-4, pics of some tagless bags I saw, more pics.

T