Where does lost luggage go?

With millions of travelers taking to the skies every day, there is bound to be some undelivered baggage. While airlines have significantly reduced the number of mishandled bags over the past two decades, less than 0.03% of all checked luggage is unable to be reunited with its owner after a minimum of three months. Many of those bags then end up at a small town in Alabama.

According to the SITA Global Baggage report, 36.1 million bags were mishandled worldwide in 2023. Out of the 5.2 billion passengers considered in the report, this represents a mishandling rate of 6.9 bags per thousand passengers, down from 7.6 the year prior.

Overall, baggage mishandling is decreasing significantly, thanks in part to new technology and operations improvements. Reportable incidents were down 23% from the 46.9 million mishandled bags in 2007, even though passenger traffic has doubled during the same period.

In the United States, the Department of Transportation has been tracking lost luggage since 1990. According to Forbes, The mishandled bag situation used to be much worse. When tracking began in 1990, the rate of mishandled bags was 6.73 per 1000 passengers. By 2018, that number had fallen to 2.84 bags per 1000, even though passenger numbers doubled.

Beginning in 2019, US airlines began reporting the total number of enplaned and mishandled bags instead of the number of mishandled baggage reports. Enplaned bags represent the total number of checked bags loaded into the aircraft, including wheelchairs and scooters placed into the aircraft cargo compartment for any reportable domestic nonstop scheduled passenger flight.

Mishandled bags are defined as the number of check bags that are lost, damaged, delayed, and pilfered while in the airline's custody, as reported by or on behalf of the passenger.

According to the most recent data available from the US Department of Transportation, 156,256 out of 37,483,020 bags (0.41%) were mishandled in September 2024, the most recent month with published statistics.

This number represents a significant decrease from September 2023, when 198,256 bags (0.53%) were mishandled from roughly the same number of enplaned bags.

Hawaiian Airlines mishandled the fewest bags (2.4 per 1,000), while United Airlines showed the most improvement from the same time last year.

Airlines have a responsibility to reunite luggage with its owners. However, they are not always successful in these efforts and must eventually reimburse the passenger for the lost items. As a result, airlines are left with baggage and other checked items that they must dispose of.

One of the primary destinations for lost items is the Unclaimed Baggage store in Scottsboro, Alabama. The store traces its history back to 1970 when Doyle Owens borrowed a pickup truck and $300 to drive up to Washington DC and buy his first load of unclaimed baggage from Trailways Bus Line. He ran an ad in the local paper announcing a sale and sold out of stock almost immediately.

By 1978, Owens had secured his first airline contract with Eastern Airlines and had since expanded to partner with all the US domestic airlines and other travel and transportation companies. Today, the store receives thousands of pieces of inventory each week and over one million visitors annually, making it a significant tourist attraction and contributor to the city and local economy.

Inside the 50,000-square-foot store, over 7,000 items are restocked daily, including books, clothing, accessories, electronics, jewelry, sports equipment, and more. In addition to entire luggage pieces, airlines, train companies, and bus operators send Unclaimed Baggage items left in seat pockets, overhead bins, and hand luggage.

The top ten most commonly received pieces in 2023 consisted of the following items:

1. Underwear
2. Shoes
3. Tablets & e-readers
4. T-Shirts
5. Books
6. Blouses
7. Blue Jeans
8. Headphones
9. Dresses
10. Cellphones

Another popular item is Ski gear, which is put out on the first Saturday in November and draws crowds the night before as people line up to be the first ones in the door to snag deals. It was at one such rush that the store's only major reunification story happened.

A man who bought ski boots for his girlfriend went home to discover her name engraved on the boots. They had been lost on a previous trip, and she had already been compensated for them by the airline.

In addition, the store features a cafe with pastries, snacks, and Starbucks coffee, an interactive demonstration of how lost bags are processed, and a bargain section located across from the main building.

The space even includes the Found Treasures Museum, featuring some of the most fascinating items ever found in lost bags. Naturally, some quite intriguing items have appeared at Unclaimed Baggage. Some of the more unusual items that have appeared include:

• A pole vaulting pole (potentially carried by an Olympian)
• A Gucci bag filled with Egyptian historical artifacts
• Horse saddles
• The camera from a Space Shuttle (which was returned to NASA )
• A suit of armor
• Bear pelt packed in slat
• One suitcase packed with just wigs (calling Moira Rose)
• A jar full of shark teeth
• Two live rat snakes in a duffel bag (The non-venomous reptiles were released)
• A set of bagpipes
• A puppet of Hoggle, a grumpy dwarf, that was used in the 1986 fantasy movie "Labyrinth

Speaking to NPR, Unclaimed Baggage CEO Bryan Owens shared that one of the store's most interesting finds was a guidance system for an F-14 Tomcat fighter jet that appeared in a shipping container:

"A device inside of there that was, like, suspended by these rubber grommets so it couldn't touch anything. And it had a placard on it. And I promise you it said this. It said, 'Handle with extreme caution. I'm worth my weight in gold'.

"The story that was going around the military was, well, the Iranians stole it. It actually was - it was not the Iranians. It was sitting in our warehouse in Scottsboro, Alabama"

It was subsequently returned to the US Navy. The most expensive item to date is a platinum Rolex watch valued at $64,000, which was sold for half that price. A fact store's spokesperson, Sonni Hood, recently confirmed to CNN.

About 7,000 new items arrive at the store each day. The store has procedures for destroying sensitive documents, IDs, prescriptions, and other personal information found in the suitcases it receives. According to the store's website, only around one third of the items are able to be sold. Another third are recycled, discarded, or destroyed.

Interestingly, for every item Unclaimed Baggage sells, one is donated to a good cause. The company has donated hundreds of thousands of pairs of eyeglasses to the Lions Foundation. Broken wheelchairs are delivered to prisons, where they are repaired and distributed to people in need through Wheels for the World. Medical supplies are also passed on to charitable organizations like Samaritan's Purse, which distributes them across the world.

Pieces of luggage are given to Love Luggage, where they are hand-painted with bright images or uplifting messages of hope and filled with essentials for children in the foster care system. Surplus clothes go to a number of charities, including the Salvation Army, for use in its adult rehabilitation and disaster relief projects.

Smaller items end up in care packages like the Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, which are delivered during the holiday season.

Baggage mishandling rates are steadily decreasing, even as passenger numbers continue to rise. Airlines have implemented a number of solutions to help locate and track mishandled luggage, which saves the airlines money in the end, too.

United Airlines , for instance, will notify you in the app and with different means when your bag is delayed and often provide detailed tracking information on the bag's journey to you, including which flight it has been loaded on.

One of the most popular ways to keep track of your luggage is through location tags like the Apple AirTags. While some carriers initially banned the practice of using them to track luggage, airlines have now widely embraced the practice and have agreed to work with Apple to enable passengers to share the location of specific items with airline staff to assist in locating missing items.

The largest reason, by far, that suitcases go unclaimed is that they do not contain any identifying information on or inside them. So don't forget to fill out your bag tags as you travel in 2025.