Fliers beware: Your bags may be pilfered

Did you hear about the ring of baggage handlers at St. Louis Lambert Field who instead of just lifting the luggage off the aircraft and placing it on the carousel simply lifted it? For more than a year, they've been helping themselves to cameras, jewelry, iPods and other valuables they've found by digging through checked luggage without anyone the wiser.

According to one transportation agent, the "bag men" were contracted through a private agency by Delta Air Lines and limited their pilfering to Delta passengers. But they're not the first baggage handlers to be left holding the bag. Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, travel agents advised fliers to leave their valuables at home. High-ticket items, such as cameras or computers, which were necessary for a trip, should stay in a traveler's carry-on luggage and never go in the belly of the plane. At that time, the problem wasn't so much pilfering from your bag as simply losing your luggage.

The topic became fairly common cocktail talk among most frequent fliers who thought checking luggage was a huge gamble. My neighbor Susan Underwood was one of them. She checked Gunther, her 200-pound dog, on a flight from Chicago to Newark, N.J. He wasn't stolen. But he was missing for three days. When the airline finally tracked him down, he had flown round-trip flights between Boston and Las Vegas. He didn't even win frequent-flier miles for all his travels.

But since the terrorist attacks and the government increased airport security, luggage looting has become a profitable, cottage industry for some dishonest federal screeners. And the agents, who have been caught with their fingers in the proverbial cookie jar, are the same ones our government hired to ensure our safety. Over the past several years, crooked federal security agents with slippery fingers have been caught in New York, Detroit, Los Angeles and several other airports. The problem is twofold. The turnover rate is quite high among the government agents while the pay is quite low. It doesn't bode well for loyalty among the workers. In addition, pilfering from checked luggage is child's play. An agent X-raying a bag has a black-and-white picture of everything packed inside. And he has the authority to open every bag. For a baggage handler bent on increasing his assets, it's there for the picking. So when you check your luggage can you do it with confidence it will arrive intact at the baggage carousel? The answer is, "no." The rule is to never pack anything in your checked luggage that you would sorely miss.

"If you lock your luggage, you must use locks approved by the Transportation Security Administration. And the federal screeners have the master key to unlock all those bags. All this is quite disturbing. While most federal screeners are honest and hard working, a few bad ones could do catastrophic damage. These government employees have clearance to move freely about the airport. And if the government doesn't find a fail-safe way to screen the agents, we could lose something much more valuable than our luggage.

Gail Todd, a free-lance writer,worked as a flight attendant for more than 30years. She can be reached via e-mail at gailtodd@aol.com.