After a woman lost her luggage on a low-cost Spanish airline, her boyfriend, Pieter Levels, a software developer, promised to take revenge in a way only a man of his talents could.
The entrepreneur created a website called luggagelosers.com, a platform created to shame irresponsible airlines and increase accountability when it comes to protecting the belongings of their passengers.
Highlights
- The website, luggagelosers.com, ranks airlines based on lost luggage incidents.
- The developer's motivation came after his girlfriend's luggage was lost on a trip from Lisbon to Barcelona.
- British Airways leads with the most lost bags; Iberia tops the list as the biggest 'luggage loser.'
The site provides a live ranking of services organized by how much luggage they lose. This, the developer hopes, will help people make more informed decisions and will force these airlines to improve moving forward.
A Software Developer created a website to shame airlines for their poor handling of passengers’ belongings after his girlfriend lost a valuable suitcase
Image credits: tippapatt (Not the actual photo)
On June 21, 2024, Pieter Levels’ girlfriend lost her belongings after taking a trip from Lisbon to Barcelona on the Spanish carrier Vueling. Her lost suitcase had to be sent to Austin, Texas, where the couple flew afterward, only for it to get mixed up between airports and hotels again, never reaching its destination.
The frustrating experience motivated Levels to turn a negative experience into a positive one by creating a tool that would help other travelers make more informed decisions when booking flights. He did this by ranking airlines based on the likelihood of the passenger’s luggage getting lost.
Image credits: levelsio
The website uses a combination of criteria to determine the airline’s ranking.
First, there’s the number of bags lost in the last 30 days, with British Airways leading by 306,374 user belongings lost at the time of writing.
Second, there’s the number of registered complaints during the same timeframe. This time, British Airways and Delta Air share the top spot, with 395 complaints each.
Third, it takes into account information taken from social media by scouring the internet for people talking about their lost luggage and cross-referencing it with data from the airlines themselves in order to accurately estimate the likelihood of the passengers’ belongings getting lost.
Finally, by combining all of the above and taking into account airline size differences, each provider gets assigned a probability score.
Spain, the United Kingdom, and India are among the top contenders for having the worst airlines, airports, and overall handling of travelers’ belongings
Image credits: levelsio
At the time of writing, the biggest “luggage loser” is the Spanish airline Iberia, followed closely by Air India and Canadian Westjet Airlines.
Conversely, the biggest “luggage winners” are Japan Airlines, Indonesian Lion Air, and Brazilian airline Azul.
The site also offers rankings for airports, with London having three of its stations, Heathrow, Stansted, and Gatwick, in the top five.
As for countries, the top five are India, with a 1 in 17 chance of losing your belongings, followed by Spain and Kenya.
“Nice launch, almost 10,000 people have seen Luggage Losers today!” Levels wrote as he reported a successful launch of the service back on June 30th, 2024.
Airlines wanting to cut costs on staff, the creator of the site argues, is the main reason behind them losing, and later selling, passengers' precious items
Image credits: Luggage Losers
For the developer, the reason behind the growing amount of luggage being lost is due to the airlines underpaying the staff in charge of handling travelers’ belongings at all stages in an effort to cut costs.
“Airports and airlines, especially in the US and Europe, are trying to maximize the amount of flights they can operate while minimizing the cost,” he stated. “Part of that is underpaying the people handling your luggage.”
“Because they don't want to pay more, there's a shortage of people who want to do those jobs, and the quality of the people remaining to do those jobs is low,” he continued. “At the same time the load on airlines and airports has never been so high. That's why luggage handlers will cut corners and might wrongly tag your luggage.”
Image credits: Miguel Ángel Sanz
Levels continues by revealing an even more concerning statistic. Turns out that airlines might be selling your lost belongings to strangers.
Image credits: Luggage Losers
Image credits: efired
“Lost luggage that is unclaimed is auctioned off to strangers. But ‘unclaimed’ is a subjective term here. If the airline does not have the staff to actually get your luggage back to you, they'll consider it as ‘unclaimed’ after 21 days.” He explains, adding that even if there’s a 60-day limit for them to hold onto your luggage, no legal requirement obligates them to do so.
This phenomenon was confirmed in May 2024 after a woman sparked outrage online by uploading an “unboxing” video of someone else’s lost luggage, which she had bought on one of the aforementioned auctions from Heathrow Airport (ranked first for lost items on the site) for just £80.
Users on X congratulated the developer on his invention, sharing their own recommendations and experiences with lost belongings on flights
Image credits: Luggage Losers
After the software developer shared his girlfriend’s experience, users joined in to share their own grievances dealing with lost belongings at airports, further motivating him to create luggagelosers.com.
“Air Canada lost my snowboard luggage for 2 days. I had an AirTag and could see that it was in terminal E at Boston airport and I also had a picture of the luggage,” shared one user.
Image credits: aerogondo
“Standard operating procedure in Barcelona airport. Baggage handling there is insane,” said another.
“Vueling also lost my luggage 2 years ago. Never found it again and only got a couple of hundred euros back after hiring a lawyer,” commented a fellow victim of the Spanish airline.
Image credits: Luggage Losers
“AirTags have really wrecked the airline's narrative around luggage. Before, they could always blame someone else, but now it’s clear that they just screw up all the time,” argued another, pointing to one of the tools the developer uses to track lost items.
