Last night I returned to London from Brussels. Unfortunately, my overnight bag didn’t.
I guess this was inevitable after four years of multiple short flights in Europe and I have been pretty lucky thus far.
Curiously, two other passengers on my flight suffered the same fate. One gentleman was very irate. For reasons best known to himself, he had buried his car keys in his suitcase which seemed a very odd decision.
Consequently, he had to call his wife in Oxford to drive down to Heathrow with the spare keys. I happened to notice he held his mobile phone a full 12 inches from his ear while he made the call to his loving partner. Hopefully, the box of expensive Belgian chocolates he was carrying, may help to salvage the situation.
My immediate thought was the stray bags were lurking somewhere in Heathrow Terminal 1 whereas my new friend and ally seemed convinced that they had never left Brussels. He was insistent that Hercule Poirot was summoned immediately to locate the bags in Brussels and placed on the 20:00 flight (in business class with cloth napkins).
My gut instinct was reinforced when four more passengers from Amsterdam came over to report more lost bags. Again, from the now sadly empty luggage carousel 4. Maybe there was something interesting on TV or a baggage handler had popped out for more tea-bags.
Ironically, I was deputising at short notice for a sick colleague so this flight was booked at very short notice in business class. So, the bright orange ‘Prioritaire’ tag didn’t exactly help my kit bag much on this occasion.
Anyway, I remain hopeful of getting my smelly clothes and stolen hotel toiletries back; particularly when I read this bold assertion on the BMI claim form
‘We would like to assure you that every effort is being made to locate your bag using a world-wide computer network designed exclusively for this purpose.’