Seetee's Blog

Drama aboard Southwest! NY & Philly post (part 1)

I am back from the East Coast! I also laboriously typed up a food picture post using the wordpress iPhone app, but it deleted it! My thumbs were sooo pissed off at the application.

Let me tell you about the start of my trip, as it was a hectic one.

So I left for NYC on Wednesday morning at 7am and I purposely didn’t check my bag in because I knew that our flight was going to be making a few stops (Oakland to Kansas City to Baltimore then to La Guardia) and I didn’t want it to get lost in all the shuffle. I took it on the plane and put it in the overhead bin. When I got off in La Guardia at around 6:30pm, I looked for my luggage and it was GONE!  A Southwest attendant came onto the plane and told me that someone had taken my bag on accident and gotten off in Baltimore. He then told me that they were going to send my bag on the earliest flight back to La Guardia and for me to check with the baggage desk at baggage claim so that they will have my contact information.

When I went down to talk to the man at the counter, he seemed confused and took down my information and said that he would “investigate” the matter and give me a call later that night. All my clothes (including my heavy jacket) were in the suitcase and not to mention I was going to be on the East Coast for 5 days so I kind of wanted some clean things to change into. I didn’t hear back from the airport that night so I phoned Southwest and they were nice and emailed/called La Guardia (no answer from La Guardia) but they also told me that since it wasn’t checked they can’t really track it and aren’t as responsible for it than they would be for checked bags. The woman that I spoke to on the phone said that the first flight was supposed to come in at 10:30am the next day, so that I should call them at around 11:30am to see if

As much as I tried to let go of the fact that I didn’t have my bag, it was hard and I worried about it for much of the next day until I FINALLY got a call at 5pm on Thursday while Viv and I were at the Natural History Museum ( this is after many calls to the Southwest baggage office at La Guardia that were unreturned) that they had my bag and that I could pick it up whenever, since because I didn’t check my bag in, they can’t deliver it. Good thing Steph lives close to the airport.

GAH. So, with every incident, there is a lesson to be learned right?

sooooooo…..

I now put my carry-on luggage in the overhead bin directly across from the row that I sit in so that I can keep an eye on my carry-on luggage while everyone is pulling theirs out of the overhead bins.

I think I’ll probably put a brightly colored ribbon or piece of string or something to mark my bag so that people won’t mistaken it for theirs. BUT! For the record, the bag of the person who took my bag looked NOTHING like mine. Theirs had a brown handle while mine is completely black. It wasn’t even of similar proportions either.

Pictures to come soon!