[gaius]

In 1999 I had bags in the hold but had to respond to a page, by the time I had resolved the incident I had missed the flight. I was super-stressed but the check-in girl just laughed and said, get the next one, it’s fine. And it was. Can you imagine that now?

[jalk]

Yes that is very common, unless you buy the cheapest tickets available. I'm sure people in 1999 would be shocked to learn that a ticket from Berlin to London is available for around 50 USD if you don't have luggage and expect to actually board the planes you have booked.

[saiya-jin]

Yeah, you get quantity, and lose quality. I've been overbooked few times (so sorry, please fly tomorrow unless we overbook you again, we don't care what this causes for your plans/further travel, and here go through crazy online forms and month-long process just to get those 250 euro you are entitled to by EU law).

Or cancelling flights for 'bad weather' reason, when all other flights departed just fine from the airport - in this case, airline doesn't have to compensate anything (freakin' Easyjet - I realized I am not rich enough and don't have enough extra vacation to use such a crappy random-quality services).

[JadeNB]

> In 1999 I had bags in the hold but had to respond to a page, by the time I had resolved the incident I had missed the flight. I was super-stressed but the check-in girl just laughed and said, get the next one, it’s fine. And it was. Can you imagine that now?

It actually literally happened to me in November 2001, even for an international flight: I missed my flight due to a 3-hour line at MDW, but my luggage had already boarded. I was assured by everyone concerned that it would be offloaded, but it flew ahead, and was (somewhat miraculously) still waiting for me at the luggage claim when I got there over 12 hours later.

[thecopy]

Sure, happened to me last year in Europe.

[gaius]

They flew bags in the hold for a passenger who had checked in but not boarded?

[Piskvorrr]

Happens pretty often - by accident, that is. My luggage went on a trip all of its own (someone loaded it into a plane bound elsewhere than I was going), so I was peppered by e-mails where it's now for the next few days, while it was misrouted to all sorts of weird places "oops, lost it again! no wait, there it is! no wait, lost it again!". Got it back at last, no damage.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

Why not? It's been through the same security as everything else, including all the air freight that's also on board that nobody seems to think about. Usually they'll offload it as a convenience for the passenger but not always if time doesn't allow.

[pjmlp]

Yep, it happened to me during a Lufthansa strike a couple of years ago.

They distributed us and our luggage across a couple of planes flying out to Vienna.

My luggage arrived on an earlier flight and had to hear from the Austrian police, while I explained that it was Lufthansa's own doing.

[madcaptenor]

Sometimes this happens even without a strike. Once I flew San Francisco - Houston - Little Rock with about a four-hour layover in Houston. When I got to Little Rock my bag wasn't on the baggage carousel - it turned out they'd put my bag on an earlier flight. (I wasn't on that earlier flight because the long connection turned out to be a lot cheaper than a short one.)

[leesalminen]

Happened to me on a domestic flight in the US this year on American Airlines.

[astura]

Yes?? This happens literally all the time. What's to be surprised about?

[gaius]

Any recent flight I’ve taken they delayed the plane while they offloaded the bags. I am genuinely surprised they they flew them anyway these days.

[astura]

That doesn't make sense, how would they ever get misdirected bags to you if bags weren't ever allowed to fly without their owners being onboard?

It happens all the time that bags get to a flight that the passenger misses and passengers get to a flight that bags miss. Not remotely unusual. It's happened to me recently too.

[gaius]

I guess it’s different if the airline does it rather than if a passenger potentially engineers a situation that their bags fly but they are safely on the ground

[SmellyGeekBoy]

Yes? It's fairly common.