Watch for items disappearing from your bags when you fly!

After hearing two members of my family having items from their checked suit cases go missing, I thought I would look into this a little more. One had a necklace stolen, while the other one had a nice belt stolen. But hey could be that they were "misplaced" when the TSA was searching through things.

Let me elaborate. I would have thought that the TSA would carefully look through your things making sure that nothing gets removed nor added to your bag. I can't claim to have anything removed from my bag, but I did have something added. A few years back after I got my bag from a kind delivery person after my bag didn't make it to my connecting flight (seems to happen about 50% of the time these days), I saw that there was a cloth cover from a baby car seat in my bag. And just as you might imagine, this isn't a small item!

So in this case, I would have to say it was due to negligence, while in the other cases it seems a little too coincidental that the most prized items in the bag happened to be "lost".

And we aren't alone, there are many other people who have had things go missing:

• Plip's Weblog - Items stolen from Baggage
  
• Ask Meta Filter - items stolen at airport from bags?
• My3cents - stolen items from luggage
  

And pwiddy's 2 cents on "My3cents" (sorry I couldn't resist) is that you might have a glimmer of hope in getting reimbursed for stolen/lost items but have have to do it right away! Looks like the TSA has a representative in every major city in the US to help deal with lost and stolen items (Lost and Found Contacts). Plus the TSA has an e-mail address that you can e-mail about lost or stolen items.

So all well and good that they offer these services, but for an official agency that is supposed to be ensuring the airline security it does NOT look good to be employing thieves. If someone doesn't have a problem stealing things then perhaps they also don't have a problem taking a little money to slip something INTO a bag rather than take something OUT.

Anyways, to make a long story short, if you have anything you value that you could not bear to loose (or be apart from for at least a day) then carry it with you on your flight!