Read the first part of this story here.
So there I am, standing in baggage claim in Chicago, crying.
Not my proudest moment.
A Chicago Police officer walked by and asked if I was okay. The whole story came tumbling out through my tears. He’s a credit to his uniform; he let me spill it out without looking at all disinterested.
When I finished, he asked if I’d checked lost and found. Maybe it had wound up there.
I thanked him, and went to lost and found.
Another sympathetic employee informed me that if any bags show up at lost and found, they are taken directly to the baggage services center…where I’d already struck out.
I cried again.
Now, I had made friends with one of the Flight Attendants who worked that flight home. She has a son near my kiddos age, and we bonded over that. I sent her a text asking if she, by any chance, remembered the name of the gate agent who worked that flight. Maybe the gate agent that night would remember something that might give me a clue where my bag had disappeared to!
She didn’t remember, but she looked it up. Then she suggested I head back to the gate we left from; maybe I’d find the agent there, or find someone who knew her.
Back through security and off to the gate. The agent working there was busy boarding a flight; not a good time to ask for help. But the agent at the gate next door was in between flights. I knew he was working on something, but he didn’t have a crowd of people demanding his attention at the moment. Perhaps he could help?
So I asked if he had a minute, and when he said yes, told him my tale.
He was also sympathetic, but said he couldn’t do much to help. He knew that both the gate agent I was looking for and the supervisor who had worked that night were not on duty yet, since they work afternoon shifts.
He did, however, call a supervisor.
After telling the story again, the supervisor started looking stuff up in the computer and making calls. He also shot down my theory about the bags falling off the cart by reporting that the gates in that concourse don’t use carts to transport valet bags. So I was even MORE confused about how our bags went missing.
Over the phone, he got someone to check in the employee lost and found, and two other places I can’t remember.
They managed to find a missing tote bag; unfortunately, it belonged to a Flight Attendant for Frontier airlines. For a moment, my heart leapt! We actually had the same first name! But I clearly have a different last name than this lady, and don’t work for Frontier.
However, that gave the agents an idea. Since my Inflight Manual is in my tote bag, perhaps someone found it, opened it to ID the owner, saw the Manual from MY airline, and sent it over to my operations center.
It sounded like a strong possibility, so I thanked everyone and headed to my terminal to go check.
First, I headed to my airlines baggage center. A quick walk-through, and nope. No bag. Then I called lost and found. They had NO bags in their office at the time.
Then off to my airlines Flight Attendant duty office.
The folks working at the desk that day said that if they had gotten that bag, an email would have been sent out to all office personnel and I would have been notified immediately. They also shared my befuddlement at HOW a valet checked bag could be lost.
Then he made a comment about how if someone found it, they’d be sure to send it to my base.
Uh-oh. I’ve transferred bases twice in the last two years. I can’t remember if I updated the base information in my manual!
So I called both my previous bases, to see if it had shown up there. Nope.
By that time, I had missed my planned-for return flight home. I still had some time to kill before the next flight I could take.
So I headed back to the original, sweetheart of an American agent that helped me. This time, we talked through procedure. I hoped it would help clarify where things might have gone awry. Sure enough, my educated guess on procedure was verified:
- IF a valet checked bag does not make it on the aircraft, for whatever reason, it is supposed to be loaded on the next flight to that destination.
- IF it is NOT loaded on the next flight to that destination, it is supposed to be taken to the baggage service center.
Since obviously neither of those “supposed to’s” occurred, something weird and inexplicable happened. But what?
Time to think outside the box.
What if, instead of putting it on the next flight to my home, the ramp agents just put it on the next flight heading out of that gate?
My sweetheart agent looked up the next flights departing from that gate, which happened to both depart on Saturday morning. The first went to Detroit; the second went to Kalamazoo.
I wrote down the flight numbers, and before I headed off, made sure I got the names of the employees that had been so helpful. This is a rotten situation, but truly, everyone I dealt with (aside from the one baggage service center supervisor) was extremely nice, helpful, and sympathetic. Especially considering my line of work, I try to reward good employees with compliments addressed to the right people.
I left the gate, and then it was decision time. Jed was scheduled to play his first-ever tee-ball game at 6:00 p.m. If I took the next flight home, I would make it with no problems. If I stayed in Chicago to talk to the gate agent and supervisor that worked Friday’s flight, I might not make the game at all, and would certainly miss most of it.
What to do?
This story is so long…part 3 tomorrow!
