Murphy’s Law for Airline Baggage

Are you one of those nervous, nail biting, airline passengers who likes to be well in time for your flight and is happy only if he has checked his baggage and proceeded in time for the security check?

You may have got rid of your nervousness and brought down your heart rate to manageable levels, but you may have a price to pay at your destination that will get you biting your mails once again.

There is the immutable Murphy’s Law of Airline Baggage that Murphy for some reason forgot to mention.

So when you make your way leisurely to baggage carousels you are in for an unpleasant surprise.  This is when the law actually kicks in.  And it is not dependent on  the location, airline or airport.  It is just like any other immutable law of nature.

The Airline Baggage Law no 1

If any of you are experts at inventory management you will understand the first law quite well.  Its called LIFO or Last In First Out.

This means that those passengers who boarded the plane in the nick of time, huffing and puffing away, thinking the plane was going to leave before them, are going to get their bags coming on the baggage carousel first.

No, there is nothing you can do about it.  If you were late to check in, your bags will go into the hold of the plane last which means that they will come out first.

So you poor nervous traveler, this challenges even the law of karma. There is no way you can avoid it.  Being good and arriving in time doesn’t mean you are going to be returned with goodness by the airline.

The Airline Baggage Law no 2

 Well this law is a little more contentious.  It says that the bags that arrive first will not have their owners waiting at the baggage carousel.

It irritates you to find that the same red bag is going round and round the carousel, while you are anxiously craning your neck to see if yours is the next bag on the carousel (now that you have positioned yourself at a vantage point where you can see the bags being loaded on the carousel). And you wonder what the owners of the bags are doing, where they are, and why they are not collecting their bags and going home. Which is what you would exactly like to do if not for Murphy’s Laws for Airlines Baggage.

If any of you have managed to escape any of these laws or have different experiences on airline travel  Contact me on Twitter or make a comment below

Prabhakar Mundkur is an independent brand & marketing consultant.  He has experience across a wide range of categories from fmcg, healthcare, technology, durables to corporate brand strategy.  He is also Chief Mentor at Percept H.