The situation has been blamed on staff shortages both at the carriers, the airport security staff that have to scan all the checked-in luggage,
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And the ground handling firms that are typically employed to get all these suitcases and bags onto the planes and then back to the carousels.
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With many of these teams seeing redundancies during the pandemic, they now can't cope with the pent-up demand to go abroad on holiday again.
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It has led to images of hundreds of missing suitcases piled up in warehouses.
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And one insurance firm, Spain's Mapfre, said that the number of passengers reporting missing luggage this summer was 30% higher than in 2019
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While no global estimates are yet available for the volume of delayed or lost luggage so far this year, data for 2019 shows that the problem has always existed.
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That year 19 million bags and suitcases were late arriving around the world, and 1.3 million were never seen again,
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according to an annual report by SITA, a provider of baggage management software.
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Add luggage being damaged or pilfered, and 5.6 items per 1,000 passengers were "mishandled".
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To try to keep tabs on their items of luggage, a growing number of passengers are turning to technology.
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Specifically, they are attaching GPS trackers to their luggage, such as Apple's AirTag.