Peter Goers: Qantas has mishandled its baggage handling debacle by using senior executives

Having mishandled and misplaced luggage, Qantas has now mishandled and mislaid their baggage handlers. It ain’t going to work, writes Peter Goers.

Suddenly everyone’s travelling again. That’s lovely. But there’s chaos at airports with long, snaking queues for snaky passengers and the dreaded extra risk of lost baggage. I bags staying home. No, I jest. The travel industry has been hardest hit of all during this pernicious pandemic – is there any other kind? So it’s fantastic that travel is in full revival.

During the pandemic Qantas axed nearly 1700 ground staff including baggage handlers and is now outsourcing those crucial jobs to the horror of unions and the Federal Court. To help out, Qantas is encouraging its senior executives to work as baggage handlers for up to five days a week for three months.

That’s bound to make things worse. How many senior executives do you know who can actually do the jobs they manage?

Currently Qantas mishandles or mislays up to nine bags in 1000 and they’re generally mine. Virgin has a more immaculate connection of bags to passengers with only three per 1000 mislaid.

Bright suitcases on luggage conveyor belt at arrival area of passenger terminal in airport. View of baggage carousel.

I’m an appallingly heavy packer and I never learn. I’ve taken clothes and stuff all round the world and never used them and paid dearly for it. I suppose I’ve given this stuff a holiday.

When packing, you’re supposed to lay out everything you want to take, then halve it. I do that but I double it. Consequently, I always travel with two suitcases and Excess Baggage is my second name. A decade ago, airlines mislaid one of my bags fourteen times in four years both domestically and internationally.

It’s ghastly if you’re overseas and have to waste precious time of your holiday waiting for an errant bag to turn up. Returning from Beijing, one suitcase didn’t come with me and I sat outside the Brisbane Airport for eight hours waiting for it to arrive.

Arriving in Rio de Janeiro from Dublin, one of my bags went to Yorkshire. Worst of all was the experience of my first trip to Cuba, via Mexico City. When I arrived at check-in I was the 101st passenger on line. Air Cubana happily has a very generous baggage allowance and many passengers were travelling with car tyres, flat screen TVs, stereo systems and vast mountains of baggage. On arrival in Havana, one of my bags was still in Mexico City. At the Havana Airport you line up at the lost luggage counter to be told you have to return to the airport everyday at 3.30pm to see if your bag has arrived.

Thanks to the good folk at the Hotel Nacional I was reunited with my bag, 32 hours later. On my many subsequent visits to Havana I always sat on the right side of the plane so I could see my luggage being loaded – a great reassurance.

Baggage handlers unload luggage from a Qantas aircraft at Adelaide Airport, August 10, 2022. Picture: NCA NewsWire

Sometimes a missing bag is not the fault of the airline. Arriving in Cairo in 1994 with an elderly friend, I collected our luggage and we were driven for an hour to the hotel. Cairo then had eleven million people and one traffic light. At the hotel, I realised one of our bags was back at the airport so back I went and, fortuitously, the bag was still going round and round the carousel.

I’d so like to be one of those clever travellers who can travel the world with just carry on baggage – which is not a film with Barbara Windsor et al. That’s become harder as airlines are increasingly strict about the weight of carry on luggage. Jetstar is particularly stringent on this.

A heavy packer (and I don’t mean Jamie Packer) can take heart from the movie Joe Versus The Volcano in which Tom Hanks’s heavy packing saves his life.

Having mishandled and misplaced luggage, Qantas has now mishandled and mislaid their baggage handlers. It ain’t going to work and more passengers will arrive with only the bags under their eyes.

Peter Goers can be heard weeknights and Sundays on ABC Radio Adelaide.