How a Lossy Bag Gets There: Valerie Szybala’s Story of Finding Its Way to Lose Its Bag
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Passengers are getting increasingly proactive when it comes to lost luggage, with many using GPS trackers to locate their missing bags — such as professional poker player Steve O’Dwyer, who went on an epic campaign, including a live TV broadcast , to retrieve his bag from London Heathrow.
It is now the case that a story is to be told by Valerie Szybala. The disinformation researcher from Washington D.C. received her lost luggage after nearly six days, during which she tracked it as it went on walkabouts to local malls and McDonald’s while the airline told her that the bag was safely at its distribution center.
When she found the empty suitcases by the dumpsters, she was worried. “And United was lying to me so I took it to Twitter.” Her January 1 picture of suitcases by the dumpsters has seen 21 million views on the internet. She called the police when she found the cases but they didn’t help much since she couldn’t name the apartment.
The story she has to tell of how her bag was lost and found, and how United Airlines dealt with her case, is enough to make you never check a bag again.
She was going back to D.C.’s Reagan Airport on December 28 after a month abroad, her first international trip in several years. She had bought an Airtag — Apple’s tracking device — especially for the trip.
The bag got to D.C. on December 29th. She would get her hands on it on January 2. She accepted United’s offer to have the bag shipped directly to her home, rather than having to wait in line at the airport. She says she made a big mistake when she let them hand it to a third party.
The Bag was in the Service Center. Is Your Bag in the D.C. suburbs? An airline passenger’s advice to travelers
She says that the hold time on the phone was great and she had to wait a long time for her call.
“But I did it every day and they were reassuring me that the bag is coming, it’s in our system, it’s safe in our service center, it’ll be delivered tonight. That was never true.
In addition, Szybala was able to see exactly where the bag was thanks to the Airtag. “As of Friday 30 at 8 p.m. it had gone to rest in an apartment complex a couple of miles away from me,” she says.
We were looking in trunks for my case. Then when I went outside I had a text from a courier saying he had my bag and was just around the corner. He met me in front of the building and brought my bag with him.”
Szybala had recovered her bag only an hour before speaking with CNN, and hadn’t gone through the case fully, but said that “everything looks in order.”
In a statement, United Airlines said that the baggage delivery vendor it uses doesn’t meet its standards and they are investigating what happened to cause the service failure. They didn’t address the behavior of their own staff who repeatedly told Szybala that the suitcase was in United’s distribution center when in fact it was ambling around the D.C. suburbs.
Her advice to travelers? If you have any sort of connection, a tracking device is helpful. Take a picture of the bag to see what’s in it. Don’t accept it if they promise to deliver, just say you’ll pick it up if the airport isn’t too far away.
Travel News News: Love Stories from Apple Air Tags to Gibbons, Zookeepers, and the Fraudulent Mailbag
There is controversy with airtags. Two women sued Apple in December, claiming that their ex partners used small location devices to keep an eye on them.
In our latest weekly roundup, CNN Travel celebrates love stories: The gal pals who bonded over marriage misgivings, the 22-year-olds who found their life partner by buying cheapskate standby tickets and the gibbon who mystified zookeepers by having a baby when she lived alone in her cage.
When she got home from the wedding she cried, but she found comfort talking with a fellow traveller, Cindy Jarrin, at the Miami airport. A decade-long friendship with Cindy and her marriage didn’t work out but it is still a love story.
And 22-year-old Vickie Moretz had never left the southern United States when she and her friend booked standby flights to London in 1982 — without understanding what standby meant. After pleading with airline staff, Vickie got the very last seat on the plane and was seated next to a 22-year-old Englishman named Graham. Four decades later, the romance between them never stopped, as they married before the end of the year.
Online booking platforms, tour operators and hotel companies confirm that US travelers are busy packing their bags for transatlantic adventures before spring leaves are even in bud. The increased demand is pushing up prices, too. You can start working on your vacation plan by reading this report.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/travel-news-love-friendship-gibbons/index.html
Eerie photographs of barnacle-clad vessels discovered in the icy waters of the Baltic Sea, and their implications for the tourism industry at the Costa Rican border
For the sake of attracting more tourists, many destinations have been narrowing their search about the types of tourists they want to attract. In an effort to discourage party-hungry travelers, Amsterdam has banned marijuana on the red light district’s streets.
Mexican authorities have banned shark-related tourism activities on Guadalupe Island off the coast of Baja California, which is a popular spot for sport fishing and cage diving. The decision to protect wildlife ends the tourism economy on the island.
Finally, federal authorities opened an unattended bag at a Detroit airport and discovered a young dolphin’s skull . It’s been handed over to US Fish and Wildlife Service inspectors for investigation.
Two divers have spent 25 years wreck-hunting. The eerie photographs of the barnacle-clad vessels they’ve discovered in the icy waters of the Baltic Sea are gathered together in a book.