Unclaimed Baggage Center

I agree; they do have a good website. Unfortunately, no reports of a Celtic harp being found.

Ernest, I don't know if I agree with your assessment of airline behavior. I do know that if I had anything of value, I would place it in my carry on luggage or on my person and not in the checked bags. The Unclaimed Baggage Center says they bought a 5+ carat diamond ring. How that wound up in checked baggage, I can't hazard a guess.

Boyd, The property is mine. I pay the airline to deliver me and my baggage to point 'Whatever' - when I arrive I collect my bags, all done as contracted. However, if they make a mistake and ship my luggage to Whatever, Florida instead of Whatever, Oregon they have a legal and moral obligation to locate my bags and send them to me regardless of where I am. But they don't. They give you so many days, after that they sell it to someone else. Now tell, me what's the real difference between that behaviour and if they steal it out of your car while you're traveling. They're selling your property, items they don't own, to another person, who then sells it to someone else again. In any other situation they'd be charged with theft.

Remember, the reason Blue Beauty went walk about was an airline screw up, and they were on the verge of selling it off to someone else when Trey found it. That's exactly how it works.

About a decade ago i saw a news article on this whole process. One odd thing is certain US airlines didn't like flying into a couple of countries because the laws there made them personally responsible for lost baggage. Any unclaimed bags at the destination airport they were intended for have to be kept there until collected or five years, which ever is shorter. Any baggage found to be shipped to the wrong location had to have the owner contacted before it could be moved, and then shipped to where the owner wanted it. Expensive activities, and not ones the airlines liked to do. They changed their baggage handling systems to include more checks and lost baggage never happened there. So it showed they can do it right, but while they can get away with a 'Who cares' attitude they will continue to do so.

I don't know if you can do it now, but it was once possible to insure the baggage on the airline. The companies didn't do anything different until someone hit them up for a claim of a quarter of a million dollars for documents in the lost baggage. Then the w3ay they handled the insured stuff changed. Today, if I fly and I can't carry it on, I don't take it. that saves the risk of loosing it, and reduces time waiting for it to be unloaded.