A baggage handler has revealed why passengers should never tie a colorful ribbon on their suitcase before checking in their bag.
Going on vacation is often the best part of the year, as you put your out-of-office message on for a week or two of pure relaxation, adventure, or sightseeing.
The actual traveling process can be tedious, however, as it involves hours sat waiting in airports or at the baggage carousel.
Many passengers have taken to adding a colored ribbon or stickers to their case to make them easy to spot amongst the many almost identical bags – but this can actually be a pretty bad idea.
While many people think adding a unique identifier to their case could mean they’re out of the airport as quickly as possible without having to hunt for their bags, the reality could be quite the opposite.
Dublin Airport baggage handler John revealed that adding ribbons or stickers to help you spot your bag could actually end up delaying it – or causing it to get lost altogether.
He explained to RSVP Live: “Ribbons that people tie onto their suitcases to help identify them can cause issues with the bag being scanned in the baggage hall.
“If the bag can’t be scanned automatically it can end up in manual processing, which could mean your bag doesn’t make it to the flight.”
And nobody wants to arrive on a two-week vacation and spend half of it without their belongings, desperately trying to track down where the heck their case has ended up.
While there may be several thousand other plain black suitcases coming through the airport, sending yours off without any identifiers such as ribbons or old travel stickers will give it the best chance of arriving safely.
John added: “Take old stickers off the bag, it can cause confusion with the scanning process.”
And if you happen to be a fan of marzipan wrapped in chocolate, you may not want to bring any home with you as a souvenir.
Unfortunately, marzipan can often get mistakenly flagged up as a potential explosive when your bags are scanned.
John explained: “Don’t ever pack Marzipan in your luggage. It has the same density as some explosives so your bag will be removed and you’ll be called from the plane for a bag search.”
Yikes.
And one last piece of advice he gave was to put your suitcase wheels-up in order to give it the best chance of arriving with the wheels intact – because there’s nothing worse than having to drag 20+kg of luggage with a broken castor.
We’re off to take all the ribbons off our bag immediately.
