Travel Tip: Save Those Baggage Tags

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by Renae Chiovaro on May 10, 2012

I fly several times a year and never gave much thought to the baggage tags. Normally I just tuck the ticket envelope with the tags into my purse and never give them a second thought. Last month I dealt with cancelled flights, rerouting and lost luggage. It was then that I realized how important those baggage tags are!

It’s a long complicated story that I am sure would bore you to tears! Short version: American Airlines lost my bags for 3 days. I didn’t file a report when I landed since I didn’t know the luggage was lost. Since I was rerouted to a different airport I was told that my luggage would be at my original destination. And guess what? It wasn’t!

If you don’t file a missing bag report within 4 hours of your flight, you are pretty much out of luck. Which of course in my case it was over 4 hours later since our flight came in at midnight and the other airport was closed. I did have the luggage tags though. The airlines couldn’t file a missing bag report for me since it had been over 4 hours- I was told to keep calling the 800 number with my bag tag numbers. Now the weird thing is even with those numbers that can’t tell you where your luggage is! Nope, it’s not a traceable number. They couldn’t even tell me if the bag was still in Texas where my flight originated.

However, if they do find your luggage, you will need the tags in order to pick the bags up. We are very thankful that they found all three of our bags since basically they contained mine and both boys whole wardrobes.

So the next time you fly, don’t loose those bag tags and make sure to report missing luggage ASAP!

Check out my previous Travel Tip posts for more ideas.

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Renae Chiovaro

Renae is a married working mom of two handsome boys. She works as a registered dental hygienist by day and blogs here at How to Have it All by night. She enjoys cooking from scratch, working in her vegetable garden and functional training.