Forget The Luggage ... Just Buy New Clothes When You Get There

It has been estimated that about 300,000 pieces of personal luggage get lost or stolen every year throughout the airline industry. And in defense, airlines collectively spend around 2.5 billion dollars a year tracking down and returning luggage and compensating passengers for lost items. I fortunately have not been a victim to lost luggage ... yet, but many of my friends have, and I have been told it's quite frustrating. But I really wonder if this disappearing personal paraphernalia mess could easily be avoided by simply employing a system that works. UPS alone claims to have delivered 16.8 million packages a day equating to 6.1 billion deliveries a year ... over twice the amount all the airlines combined handle. Yet, United Parcel Service has a lower package lost/not claimed rate. And, in my opinion, UPS has a greater challenge ... the owner of the goods does not accompany it in transport. Obviously, their system works. Isn't it amazing that a letter or package can make it around the world in two days, yet your baggage can't manage to get from one plane to another in four hours?