Friday, April 15, 2005

And to cap off a long day

In my previous post I related the tale of my adventures with CBP. You'll remember I mentioned the woman who comes out to get your flight details; luggage count, flight number and name? No? Tsk tsk .

Well she passed me over so, when I was finally released, I went into the baggage hall, three hours late. No sign of my luggage. I asked one of the baggage handlers. If it wasn't one of the bags littering the edges of the hall I needed to continue my flight and make a lost luggage claim at the end point. It wasn't; so I did. I have to admit that this didn't sound completely plausible; I asked the customs guy if that was how it worked; he assured me it is. Got home and about 4 hours later they delivered it to my home most apologetically. It seems a lot of luggage was lost between Amsterdam and Detroit today.

Well it was about my turn. In 23 years of international travel that's the first bag that's ever gone astray. Kudos to NorthWest Airlines for correcting it as fast as they did after being notified of the loss.

Gee, they even gave me a voucher good for $25 off my next ticket with NorthWest .

Maybe I'm too forgiving of human frailty; on the other hand I do write software so I'm intimately aquainted with human frailty. That one can check a bag in at Nice Airport in France and expect it to arrive on the same flight as oneself two flights later and have it work almost 100% of the time amazes me. It's not like the bag can go read an itinerary and argue if it's on the wrong pallet.

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