Has anyone ever had their bag picked up by the wrong person off the carousel?

I haven’t had that happen but with people debating AirTags being worthwhile in checked luggage on this forum, this seems like a good example of when a hidden AirTag might be very helpful. I do hope you get your bag back soon.

Yes, an AirTag would have been helpful in this situation. Though I did read on another forum about a woman whose Airtag told her for weeks that her bag was in Munich but she never could get anyone to retrieve it for her and put it on a plane to the US. If she wanted it, she was going to have to fly to Munich and hope she could get someone to get it for her. (She did not post back about whether she actually had to do this.)

I do not have an iPhone, so can't use an AirTag. This summer when baggage issues where a huge deal, I looked into the Tile and a couple of other Android options. None of them got great reviews and I never got around to revisiting the subject. I typically try to avoid checking bags anyway, but was bringing home some food items that I couldn't carry on, so I had to check.

Kayla.p I should add that the longest I’ve waited to get a bag delivered to me was a week for a bag that didn’t make my flight from CDG to SFO. It was a looooong week wondering if they would ever get it straightened out.

A couple years ago our daughter had this happen. There was another bag identical to hers ( a Rick Steve's bag no less) and someone took her bag without looking at the luggage tag. She figured it out when the last bag was the one identical to hers, but she knew it wasn't hers. She let the airline know and they found the person and our daughters bag was returned to her a few days later. She said it was a pain as she had to wait for the bag an they were traveling around Europe, so it was definitely an inconvenience for her, but at least she got her own bag back.

It happened many years ago. We eventually got the suitcase back….someone in Miami had picked it up, driven home to Orlando and drove back to Miami to return it! Delta forwarded the bag to us in Ohio. I asked who it was so that I could thank them but they wouldn’t or couldn’t say. Good luck. Better luck with your insurer. When my suitcase was stolen from the trunk of the rental car in Florida on another trip, the police laughed at my request to file a report. I called my insurance company and was told I needed to provide receipts of all items I was claiming! I asked him if he had the receipts for the socks, underwear, shirt,shoes and pants he was wearing as we spoke.

I just completed a trip using Airtags after all the luggage horror stories. Luckily I had no issues and didn't need them but they are fun little gadgets. You just initialize them and then toss them in your bags and any time you want you look at them on your phone. They were barely any money so I just did it. As you noted Tile is the same thing and frankly since it's probably not much money either, I consider this a why the hell not purchase. Afterwards you can keep them in your car so you can find it in a parking lot, or a lot of people put them on their pets. Or even your kids I suppose.

Someone also noted that these gadgets can be useful when you're on the ground and trying to find your way back to your hotel since they are just sitting there waiting for your return.

Did you have a luggage tag on or inside your bag with your contact info? If someone picked it up by mistake, would they have a way to contact you?

This obviously won’t help you now, but I have bright pink tape with flamingos wrapped around the handle of my suitcase. This helps me ID the suitcase as mine and hopefully others would see that tape and know that bag is not theirs.

Good luck getting the bag back!!

Two things: my husband was THAT PERSON who mistakenly took someone else's bag. He realized it after we had exited the airport and had to go all the way back through Security to return it and retrieve his.

Second: we just flew in to Paris two days ago. Our flight out of Newark was delayed 30 minutes because someone's bag had not made it on board. That passenger knew that it hadn't because he had a tracker system on his cell phone. The pilot informed us that United had the passenger's cell phone and was following his tracker system to retrieve his bag and load it on the plane--so, sometimes it's a very good thing!
There are those who do not immediately unpack their bags when returning home (if your bag is at the person's home). There certainly is hope that you will have yours returned. Fingers crossed.

My recent AirTag story. On a trip from Porto to Orange County, California I was rerouted on another carrier in Madrid after Chinese rocket debris closed down the airspace over Madrid (no joke). I had put an AirTag in my checked bag and saw my bag never made it out of Madrid. I knew it when I landed in DFW, and met two other people on the flight with the same connections that also had AirTags and knew their bags were still in Madrid. We didn't have to wait at custom for our bags to come off the carousel, we went directly to the connecting flight. On landing in OC I was able to tell the baggage claim person not only that my bag was in Madrid but exactly what terminal. I also took a photo of my luggage to show her. She was able to email the baggage claim staff in Madrid with specific information and my bag arrived 4 days later. The other two people on my flight got their bags back but strangely all three of our bags came on three different routes home. During the course of the 4 days waiting I watched my bag go back and forth several times between two different terminals before being sent on a flight to JFK, then Orange County. I also found the AirTag useful in finding my way back to the hotel.

People dis AirTags since they only tell you where it is. As in the Munich story posted here. I am not sure what exactly a person would otherwise expect from the AirTag. I think it would be good to know where it is as noted in one other posting. You can get on with your journey if you know your bag is somewhere else. Or at least go to baggage claim people and let them know.

Isn’t it funny that for so so many years it was all about matching you bag with your number to even get out of the baggage claim area. Now, nothing security wise for bags.

Not quite, but three years ago we were at Dulles-Washington for a flight to Copenhagen to see the kids and grandson.

My backpack - with train tickets, cash, boarding pass, passport - and coat went into the security x-ray machine. Security waved me through and I waited for my stuff to come out. And I waited.

I described the coat and backpack to the security officer on duty. He called a commander and they reviewed the security video and saw a man two or three people ahead of me in the security line pick up my stuff and walk away. Police quickly canvassed the area with his description and located him in another terminal. The police hauled him and my stuff back to my terminal where I confirmed nothing was missing in my bag.

Police chalked it up as a stupid error on his part. We made our flight with minutes to spare.

We had the experience of a suitcase being caught in the area before it is visible on the carousel; this happened in Heathrow. Once everyone left with their suitcases, we went to baggage claim and for some reason (happened before?) the staff person checked the area and sure enough our suitcase was stuck. On our trip last month, thru Frankfurt, we used Air Tags for the first time. Our luggage missed the connection and upon arrival in Rome we could see where it was. Lufthansa also knew and had already made arrangements for our luggage and they notified us by text. Using the Air Tags we followed the delivery to our hotel the next day.

I once walked into a hotel room and opened up my suitcase to discover it was not my suitcase. I immediately called Delta and drove back to the Panama City Florida airport and gave them the luggage and they gave me mine

hopefully the person whose luggage I had “borrowed” eventually got his suitcase.

I’ve been very careful to check the baggage tag ever since then

Yes, back when we had black 21” bags like everyone else. An elderly women pointed our bag out to her driver to retrieve. Off it went them. We filed a lost bag complaint. Later we found out that when she got home she was mad that someone had put a lock on her bag and broke it off! It was ours and had several luggage tags on it with our names, address and phone numbers. It was returned to us but I was so angry I made the airline replace my lock.
Many years ago you had to show your baggage ticket to leave the secure baggage area with any piece of luggage, at least in NY. I wish they would do that again.

That happened to me in college. The woman who took my bag called me to see if I had taken her bag, in hopes that we could just do a bag exchange. Delicacy forbids me from repeating my response, but some how my bag was returned to me, without me having to go to the airport.

Thanks all for the anecdotes! I remember the days of having your bag tag and receipt checked before exiting the airport, but it was done manually and couldn't have been sustainable. There really ought to be some automated way to confirm you have the correct bag - maybe it's linked with your boarding pass and you have to scan it and the tag on your bag before you can exit the baggage claim area.

Happened to me once in Luxor, Egypt. It was an honest mistake. A gentleman had the same Osprey bag that I had, although he did confess that he wondered where the green tag on the handle came from. Fortunately, I spotted it just as he was leaving baggage claim. No harm. No foul. We laughed about it for a second, and then went our separate ways.

After reading a tip on the forum, I put big red stripes of dollar store duct tape on my roller bag and my backpack. The bags are easy for me to spot from across the baggage claim hall, on the occasions when I check them. And it's unlikely that anyone would mistake my bags for their own.

Denver, a couple of years ago. The bag thy left for me was similar to mine but it was obvious that someone said to their kids, “Grab that one, the big black bag!” even though mine had a fluorescent tag on it. Took about 36 hours to get my stuff.
I had been traveling with a one-bag mentality and system for many years but, for one reason or another, not on that trip. Silly mistake.

Checking baggage is a binary event; the bag is there or it is not. Like tossing a coin, no previous events have any relevance to or influence over the present event.

Why do I need I say it? You are very unlikely to have your bag mistakenly picked up if you are carrying on. You have your bag with you, you know where it is in the overhead compartment, and you make sure you take it out when you get off the plane. Problem solved!

Lee, you don’t. I guess you didn’t read all of the OPs responses as to why she had checked her luggage. There are so many reasons, your answer isn’t on topic here. Many of us have been forced to check a bag when traveling back with something that can’t be carried on the plane—knives from Germany, olive oil from Italy, wine from France, etc. Others prefer to check a bag which wasn’t this poster’s preference but is ok.

Or if not returned successfully, at what point you gave up and filed a claim for compensation.

My bag was obviously mistaken as a look alike. I figured it would be returned as soon as whoever had it opened it up. But that could have been days as Denver feeds a huge rural and metro region.

The use of tracking devices such as the Apple AirTag is not a guarantee of recovery. Anywho is actually stealing baggage will quickly find and disable the Tag. If the Tag starts pinging, that might alert some fool they have the wrong bag.

Anyone else interested: Lost luggage policies are clearly spelled out on airlines' sites and a US govt. site. You can file a tracking and recovery request immediately but how long you wait to file to file a compensation claim is both up to you and governed by the rules.

https://www.transportation.gov/lost-delayed-or-damaged-baggage
https://thepointsguy.com/guide/lost-delayed-luggage/
https://www.claimair.com/blog/in-depth-guide-on-how-to-claim-delayed-baggage-compensation/

Yep I can’t find it right now, but there was an article about the baggage theft problem here at the Atlanta airport, which is not bad for international, but is a problem for domestic and one of the first things they do is go through it looking for trackers. So you’ll find your tracker in the trashcan outside the airport.

If you are flying domestic to Atlanta, go directly to baggage claim. Don’t stop to get food. Don’t tour the airport - go to baggage claim. Delta is now getting the luggage there pretty fast for most flights. Delta has security at the baggage claim area but it’s still a problem. And I don’t think the other airlines have done anything to deal with the problem.

@Lee, you DON'T need to say it, especially so rudely.

OBVIOUSLY if I carried on, my bag would not have disappeared. And unless you're flying up front, carrying on is no guarantee that you won't be required to gate-check your bag.

Not that it's any of your business, but I rarely check bags, and never on an outbound flight. I'm a light packer. I like to deplane and get going and not wait for a bag. However, I was bringing home multiple christmas gifts that I could not carry through security - mustard (my husband's favorite gift to receive from Germany) & condiments, lotion, mini bottles of schnapps, etc.

By way of update, I called Delta baggage services at 6 am and held for an hour to speak to a human. I asked the rep if someone could please check the carousel to see if my bag was somehow stuck. She put me on hold and spoke to someone who said they would check and I would be updated by email. Haven't heard anything. 🤞

Carol,
Thanks for the advice about picking up luggage quickly. I use Atlanta often and I have not thought about theft before. Usually, I carry on - but not always as I sometimes bring extra shopping back from London.

My friend lost her luggage during the BA IT meltdown in 2017. She never got it back. She went two months before it was finally determined by AA that it was lost forever and AA gave her compensation. She had to itemize all her luggage items and if any item was over $150 she had to provide a receipt. She has just brought a bunch of new clothes and a new piece of Eagle creek luggage and thankfully had CC receipts. She ended up with about $2000. She also got some money from Travelguard but they will ask if the airline is also compensating. Good Luck, I know it's frustrating. (BTW - on that same trip, my luggage showed up in St. Louis 2 weeks later).

In order to avoid this again, we just bought new PURPLE RS luggage!

The risk of theft in Atlanta is pretty low from the International baggage claim as the public can't just walk in to that secured area. So your risk there is that someone takes your bag in error (or I guess on purpose, but...)

However, Atlanta domestic baggage claim is very close to the exit doors and to the public transport which makes it an easy target. (They seem to believe that the public transport is one of the "factors" as it makes it easy for people to get to and from the airport....)

Maybe the lesson here is to pack a carry-on with toiletries and at least a change of underclothes, just in case. Maybe a few other clothing items so you can make it a few days without spending money buying clothes.

Yes, when the words "check" and "luggage" come up in a post, the same lesson from the same posters pop up, too. The problem is that no consideration is given to the various reasons someone would check a bag.
I received the same finger wagging, too, many years ago.

In our case, my husband was transporting several kilos of research materials for a book he was working on while we took care of an ailing parent for a few months in Burgundy. OMG I wrote "a few months." Here comes the 90-day Schengen lesson. LOL

Good luck getting your bag.

There have been trips where my policy was to have no carry-on at all. Everything was to be checked, especially when TSA became stricter as to what was permitted and so on. I didn't want to be bothered with complying.

No carry-on also depended on the airline's policy, one piece free and one piece as a carry-on free. In the last few years pre-pandemic the absolute check-in piece was the spinner, which weighed in at 27 lbs or so. I had the shoulder sack as the carry-on, which weighed in at 15 lbs or so.

There were times (luckily few) that by the time I got to my seat the overheard bin directly above had already been taken up, ie, occupied by someone who barged in to my space. Super unnerving but still no big deal. I could live with it for the next 11 hours.

I myself have never had a piece taken off the carousel by someone else, intentionally or in error. I do know someone who had that happen. Happy ending....taken off by mistake and immediate contact was made based on the information given on the luggage tag.

Overhead space is not assigned to a seat location

Generally, they’re three people in a row and if all 3 have carry-on it might not all fit. Plus Some people will discover that the space above their seats has safety equipment or crew lugged meaning they can’t use it.

If I plan to check I do have a change of clothes and some basic toiletries in a carry on. And r
of course electronics and required medication should never be checked

Kayla just adding my voice to say I am sorry you are having this trouble, and hope you get your bag before too long !!

Jill S mentioned in passing that she had a photo of her checked luggage. I think that is a good tip to follow for many scenarios. We've had to deal with delayed bags a time or two, and it helped to have the photo to show the airline baggage folks what it looked like better than a verbal description.

I think some people miss the point with AirTags, is that they only tell you the last place where the bag was within range of an Apple device. The app tells you how long ago the last "ping" was made, which could be days, but shouldn't be interpreted as it still being there. If someone Apple-less takes it from there, you wont know. So if it's in the back of a warehouse, and nobody walks by with an iPhone, you'll only be seeing the last location.

Better than nothing, and I think still worth doing, just not a complete security solution.

Carol you're not quite right, nowadays in the premium econ section the overheads are often labelled as reserved for same. And if someone in that section were to have an issue, I think the FA would have been told to favor their bag over the one that some enterprising soul stuck there.

First…Yes, on both United and American premium economy the overhead space is yours. Second, we always do carryon and sorry but that does not guarantee that your luggage does not get get mixed up especially with jet lag and when your husband grabs the wrong bag. Luckily we had an ID tag on our bag with our cell number which is something I highly recommend. Unfortunately, we didn’t discover that the nearly identical bag was not ours til we got from the Milan airport to Varenna. The next morning we had to take the train back to Milan and drop off the bag to the nice gentleman and then head on to Malpensa to pick up our bag which consisted of identifying ourselves and the bag and waiting for the airline to contact the other bag’s owner to confirm that we indeed had returned his bag. This literally took an entire day and instead of a wonderful dinner on the terrace overlooking Lake Como, we had pizza in the railroad station…. but I had my bag!!!

Hi Kayla, back in the ‘80’s when we lived near Portland, Oregon, the airport baggage claim had one opening that they routed people through to check bags against the claim slips. Sometimes it was manned, sometimes it was just a walk through. During one of the unmanned times, we were coming back from a family trip - three tired toddlers, two adults and two large suitcases to retrieve. A person tried to take one of our suitcases, but we purposely had one of us standing near that open spot just in case. They were somewhat distinctive suitcases but nothing expensive looking. When we called out that he had our bag, he just left the baggage area, so he wasn’t there to pick up his own suitcase.

Since the ‘90’s I have checked a bag, so I can’t give any more recent experiences. Hopefully yours turns up very soon!

I remain ashamed that I, in fact, was also THAT person who picked up the wrong bag. In 2019, we'd visited our son, who was spending a semester in Edinburgh, and taken the RS Scotland tour while we were there. For our return flight to Chicago, we were checking our own bags, plus a blue duffel bag containing books and other items of our son, who would be returning home a few weeks later. The duffel bag was VERY heavy.

After landing at O'Hare, we arrived at the baggage carousel just in time to see my bag drop down. It's easily recognizable because of the Rick Steves tour patches fastened to it, and both of our carry-ons have pretty distinctive name tags. Immediately behind it came the blue duffel bag. It was VERY heavy. I grabbed both bags and off we went. This was when the O'Hare shuttle train was under construction (when is it not?), so we had to wait a good 15 minutes or more for a bus to the distant parking lot. I was schlepping the bags through the parking deck with our car in sight 20 feet away, when my wife suddenly exclaimed, "That's not our bag." I looked down at the "nearly" identical, VERY heavy blue duffel bag, and realized it was in fact, not our son's. I dropped it, let loose a mighty epithet, and we reversed course.

So, some 40 minutes after landing, with a three-hour drive ahead of us, we were back in the madness of Terminal 5, trying to get the attention of a United employee. A harried-looking woman finally came over, and we explained what had happened and attempted to apologize profusely. She gave us a look that wordlessly conveyed this had been a very bad day for her and these two idiots just had to make it worse. She took the duffel bag and disappeared.

Eventually, another annoyed-looking woman exited to the terminal, carrying the VERY heavy blue duffel bag that she'd been waiting for. And, at last, the United staffer returned with our bag and proceeded to read us the proverbial riot act up and down about NEVER picking up a bag without checking the tag. And then she read it to us again, and maybe even a third time. And all we could do was stand there meekly and take the beatdown. Because we deserved Every. Damn. Word.

And then we schlepped back to the buses and the parking deck, reunited with our son's VERY heavy duffel bag, and arrived home exhausted and two hours later than planned.

Suffice to say, we now absolutely, 100 percent, never fail to check that our names, indeed, are on our very distinctive luggage tags, even if we absolutely know that those bags belong to us.

Oh stoutfella - what an experience !!!

@ stoutfella.....Yes, you made a mistake in carrying off the wrong bag and you made sincere apologies to the aggrieved party and the United staffer. The behavior from both of them was totally uncalled for, undignified, by reading you the riot act, more than once. I can see you felt you deserved this display. That, however, does not justify their display of undignified behaviour, lack of detached professionalism because they felt good in chewing you out. A total lack of dignity.

The aggrieved party whose bag was mistakenly taken by you is just lucky that this incident did not take place in a foreign non-anglophone airport where if it had been done , ie what you unintentionally did, by one whose English is limited or non-existent, chances are that the stressed out woman (the owner) coming on as she did, would have been yelled in a foreign language she can't understand. Or, if not yelled at, she would have been left standing there / sitting as the staff person or the culprit upon seeing this sort ticked-off behaviour just clams up, ignores you and walks away. I've seen this a few times in both Germany and France.

I've been fortunate never to have had a bag taken by anyone else, and I've never done such a thing either.

I have never picked up the wrong bag, or had my bag picked up by someone else, but I know of a case, with which I had some envolvement, where the wrong bags were picked up.

Before about 2008, Switzerland was not a part of Schengen. If people flew from a Schengen country into Europort (Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg airport), which was in France, they would either enter France without any immigration check, or go through Swiss immigration at the airport and then go by bus through chain link tunnels into Basel, Switzerland.

So someone wrote to this website for help. They were going from Italy (Schengen) to Europort, then going into Basel to the Basel Bad Bahnhof (German Rail station in Basel). It turned out that instead of going by bus all the way into the Basel SBB Hbf, then going by streetcar to Basel Bad Bhr, it was faster to get off the bus soon after getting into Basel and taking a streetcar from there directly tp the Basel Bad Bhf. I gave them the schedule for buses to that transfer point, the streetcar schedule, and a detailed map of the transfer point (the bus stop was around the corner from the streetcar stop). I had it all figured out to be as efficient as possible.

However, when they got to the Europort, they mistakenly took someone elses bags and didn't realize it until the got into Basel, then had to take a taxi back to Europort, exchange bags, and take another taxi to Basel Bad Bhf. Sigh!

Update: my bag appeared yesterday! I heard nothing, saw nothing on the bag trace website all week. Then out of the blue I got a text that said my bag had been picked up from Hartsfield-Jackson by a delivery service and was on its way to me. I wasn't home at the time, but when my husband answered the door and saw the delivery guy with my bag, he said "if my wife were here, she'd hug you!"

Happy holidays all!

Excellent, Kayla. Glad that you and your bag were finally reunited !

Wow, so glad your bag with some Christmas presents arrived on Christmas Eve. Maybe there was a sleigh involved?

Former airline employee here. This happens so often it has a name, "bag switch." I worked for a major airline at a hub. Inevitably, arriving people would come to make a missing bag report saying, "There is a bag that looks just like mine still on the carousel." We would do our best to get the person who took the wrong bag to bring it back. This was in the days before cellphones, so it's easier to reunite people with the right bag now. That's IF they have an ID tag on the bag with their name AND cellphone number.

After handling hundreds of delayed baggage reports, I have recommendations. Always, always have a distinctive name tag AND some other unusual tag on any checked suitcase. I still travel a lot. On the rare occasions when I check a bag I have an unusual name tag AND a red or yellow itinerary tag (sold at Magellan's, they call the product a retriever tag), AND a brightly colored ribbon securely tied on the luggage handle. I also make a beeline for the baggage claim belt on arrival, and watch carefully as bags come out. This year I bought Apple AirTags and put them in an internal pocket on everything I carry or check. My precautions have resulted in never getting separated from my bags for years and years.

A little bit different situation, but relevant to your question, I think: my family and I had 5 pieces of light blue checked luggage on our return from living in Rome for two years. We couldn’t find our luggage and I noticed that another passenger had loaded a cart with what looked like our luggage. I approached him and he said that it was his. I flipped over one of the tags and showed him that the name on the tags wasn’t his. We retrieved all of our luggage.

@ stoutfella.....Yes, you made a mistake in carrying off the wrong bag and you made sincere apologies to the aggrieved party and the United staffer. The behavior from both of them was totally uncalled for, undignified, by reading you the riot act, more than once.

Fred: Just to be clear, we had no interaction with the rightful owner of the bag we picked up. We simply saw her exit with the bag in hand. She looked annoyed, and rightly so.

The arrivals area at O'Hare terminal 5 that day was absolute bedlam. Jam-packed with thousands of people. The United staffer was clearly having a very, very bad day and took some of it out on us, but I don't blame her. Was she a little over the top with it? Maybe. But it was totally our mistake and, not only did it aggravate the staffer, it made us late on what was already going to be a stressful, exhausted drive home. Definitely a lesson learned for us.

@ stoutfella....absolute bedlam is a very accurate description. Your point is well taken. If I had been in your situation ( Luckily, so far I've avoided that) and had made sincere apologies to the staffer, I would have expected more professional detachment as a result.