In another threadconcerning the difficulties of shipping valuable items comments were made that you often have just as much to worry about with shipping to developed countries in getting stuff stolen (mainly in airports).
I’m kind of puzzled as to why this is such a difficult problem to deter. From the time a bag is checked in to it’s loading on the plane, it’s presumably in a fairly contained baggage handling area which can be very closely monitored with cameras and on site personnel, and yet massive amounts of theft are still occurring even in first world sophisticated airports.
Why? What’s the huge challenge in having people (via cameras and physical inspections) keep an eye on things in the journey from the check in counter to the plane?
Seriously, though, you’re talking about an agency with minimal investment in preventing thefts. Airports can’t fire the TSA if their employees steal stuff, and you can’t refuse them your business. I do know that there have been some steps to install cameras watching the TSA screening areas, but the cost of cameras, plus more people to watch them, is going to prevent total saturation.
We used to get this here at lot at London Heathrow (Thiefrow, they called it) and if anyone so much as said anything to them about it, the unions would strike.
You have the same problem as with American health care - there is a big disconnect between who pays and who gets the service. Much of the baggage handling is in one big place, anyone not just direct airline employees can theive. Opportunity is actually better for the TSA since they get to see if anything interesting is inside, and they can redirect bags for “further screening” or otherwise tag them for accomplices.
The airlines (as pointed out above) have almost no control over those employees, cannot even monitor them. Same for any general airport employees. They can’t really suffer from customer loss if it happens to passengers regardless which airline they take. So they can’t take measures and it doesn’t hurt them if they don’t…
The airport or TSA similarly - it’s not like people will stop flying if their luggage occasionally gets broken into. So the aiport authority doesn’t really care too much; they can’t fire the TSA. Not sure how the jurisdictional problems play out (I.e. airports are federal responsibility in Canada, where theivery is or was a real problem in Toronto).
Odds are even local police flashing a badge are not authorized to wander into secure areas, so the thieves are even more protected than usual. The responsible security is not the local authorities who might worry about reputation, but the feds who have a huge country to worry about - so even complaints from a fairly large city won’t register much on their radar, unless it’s about terrorism; theft is pretty low down on their priority list.
Another seemingly hard problem I could solve easily. They have to get said stolen stuff to their car and drive away, right? Search them as they leave work, hire a totally different company to do only that. Stealing stops that easy, if they cannot take it out they are not going to steal it. This would work great at low expense.
Are you going to inventory every item of clothing, iPhone, iPod, jewelry, and cash that a person enters with every day so that you can see if they leave with anything they didn’t have in the morning?
If you have to pack something valuable in your checked bag, check a handgun in it as well. There’s a a bunch of rules to follow, most of them surprisingly common sense, but when you declare that a bag has a checked weapon it goes into a special secure area with considerably more surveillance. That, plus the fact that you are not only allowed but required to lock the hard sided container for the gun with a non-TSA compatible key does a lot to ensure arrival.
When I worked as a package handler at a FedEx hub, we simply weren’t allowed to wear jewelry or bring cell phones into the workplace (except wedding rings).
On the way out after your shift, everyone got a pat-down at the security station. Seemed to work fairly well.
Would it be that hard to do the same for baggage handlers?
Part of it is a “cold case” problem: The baggage handlers know that if they steal from an outgoing bag, the theft will only be discovered hours later and hundreds of miles distant by a traveler whose first priority is probably not tracking down the thief.
Then there is anonymity: Each bag is probably handled by 4-8 handlers, each of whom can point the finger at collegues in another city, even if the airline kept track of which baggage crew (un)loaded which airplane.
To focus on my particular point. If theft is epidemic put some cameras in the baggage handling areas where the thefts would be happening and trusted security people to monitor them and (I would think) problem solved.
I’m assuming (possibly incorrectly) that the areas where they can open the baggage is an inspection area that is limited in size and scope. Why is this not a simple slam dunk solution to baggage pilfering?
Or simply make sure that the people monitoring have motivation to monitor …
Cameras in the handling areas, broadcast to monitors in the concourse. Lots of bored people with nothing better to do but notice if the baggage is mishandled.
Why would airlines spend money to stop theft, when they don’t have to take responsibility for the theft right now anyway? If my hypothetical $1,000 camera gets stolen out of my luggage when I travel, the airline doesn’t have to do anything about it.
I’m not being a smartass - seriously, what would an airline’s motivation be to spend money on something that’s not really hurting them now? People still fly - they just ship their valuables, carry them on, or take the risk of theft.
Someone sits with a hand scanner and scans each bag’s tag, then punches in which mini-belt it will go onto.
Bag arrives at mini-belt (I forget the correct terminology) where a worker or possibly two will be stationed, next to a row of carts. The workers read the tags for the bags and load them all onto certain carts based on flight number. These bags can stay in this area for over an hour depending on how long the flight is out, and maybe it’s way early because it was a transfer bag from another flight. Transfer bags might be in this area sitting around a better part 4 hours.
About 20 minutes before the flight, bags are driven from the mini-belt out to the airplane and are loaded.
I worked for a ground crew that had a bad reputation, but I have never known of outright “stealing”… sometimes bags explode and random untraceable stuff is just loosely riding the conveyor belt though. Only time I have ever seen employees take stuff is when a loose bottle of vodka was riding the conveyor belt. I know of no outright thefts from bags when I was there.