Friday, July 04, 2008
Looking after your luggage in Tenerife
Well, you'd better look after it yourself, because the baggage handlers might only help themselves. We know that this goes on all over the world, but TypicallySpanish report that four baggage handlers were caught on security cameras at Tenerife Sur airport, allegedly taking items from the baggage.
The good news, I guess, is that this confirms that Tenerife airport has security cameras in place and on the job and, that they caught these perps!
The report in Spanish says that all four worked for an airline, rather than the airport itself, but they don't report which company. It also says that the police investigation, which involved analysing the security footage, was initiated after several of the company's passengers had complained that their suitcases had been forced open. So, you know that complaints are heard too.
When I flew to the UK from Tenerife last month, I put my money where my mouth is and paid all of 5 euros (about 4 quid) to have my suitcase plastic wrapped. Making them a bit harder to get into, quickly and invisibly, my hope is, faced with a choice of suitcases to dip from, baggage handlers with klepto tendencies will be less likely to choose the ones that have been wrapped.
It's a slightly amusing spectacle too, because the lad who lifted my suitcase in order to do the wrapping, first put on his weight-lifting belt. A necessary precaution for his health, perhaps, but there was a certain ceremony about it that made it funny - not to mention the irony of the ever-reducing baggage allowance on flights these days, which calls that need into question.
That aside ...
It dawns on you, as soon as they start wrapping, that you could easily have done this at home for just a euro or so, with a roll of kitchen clingfilm. :)
What did strike me is that none of the other suitcases arriving in the UK had been plastic wrapped, so British people clearly haven't adopted this idea yet and, if it does offer any protection against being a theft victim, they're missing out on it. I certainly don't think that the fact that my suitcase arrived intact is "conclusive proof" that this "works": there is no foolproof prevention, but it might help and I feel it was worth the small price to feel better about it.
