Our bag got stolen on an AirAsia flight… Kind of

After tons of time waiting for Cathay flights to open up to go from Sydney to Hong Kong, we decided to move on and hop a cheap AirAsia flight to Myanmar.

Due to the 7kg weight limit for carry-on bags, we decided to check one of the bags and stuff it full.

That’s basically all the back story you need. Oh, and we had an overnight layover in Kuala Lumpur, and so I asked them to check our bag to KL, and then we’d re-checkin the next morning. The agent greatly assured me you have to pick up your bag anyways at KL.

When we get our tickets I realize our seats aren’t together, and the agents said it is “impossible” to change seats on their system. Whatever. After boarding we moved a few rows back, and had a row to ourselves. We were in row 30, but our bag was left above row 26.

The one area in life where I’m not in a hurry is deplaning. It’s crazy how the plane stops and people start jumping up and grabbing their bag. Then followed by minutes of standing waiting for the bridge to connect. So I take my time and stay seated until I’d be exiting anyways.

As usual, when exiting I would grab my bag as walking off the plane.

But…

Our bag wasn’t there.

It was our camera backpack. Pretty much every expensive thing we own is in a smallish red backpack. You wouldn’t want to check that stuff, right?

That bag with all our expensive tech/camera stuff, was the one missing.

Carrie noticed there was a small, black, and completely empty back pack in the same overhead. She said, “maybe someone grabbed the wrong bag?”, but I couldn’t believe anyone would have possibly mistook the extremely different and extremely empty bag for our heavy and overly stuffed bag.

I walk up to the front flight attendants and tell them and they tell me to tell the ground staff.

I assumed I would walk off the plane and see a gate full of people waiting for the plane and agents. But it was completely empty. It was the arrival floor, and I could see down an empty hall for what seems to be a mile of airport without any staff.

This is when I realized the situation could be bad.

 

I started speed walking down the long hallway scanning for the bag. After passing dozens of people I started walking faster, and faster, until it was a jog.

No backpacks, and lots of people heading to immigration.

Like the first person off the plane is probably near a taxi by now.

Now it turned into a run.

Still no backpack.

 

I finally passed some staff standing as a group and told them about the situation and they told me to tell the people at the desk further down.

Thanks a lot.

 

After a few minutes into my run the crowd split two directions. Transfers turn left, and immigration go up the escalator to the right.

At this point the person with my bag is in one line or the other and probably close to totally exiting the security. However, either direction did require a bag scan. While I couldn’t go to both, I figured a staff member could call ahead and keep a look out for a small backpack.

I took a left, where the AirAsia connection desk was… ya know, for reprinting tickets and stuff.

I told them the situation, and assumed they would call both security check points as I asked, but neither staff member said a thing.

Also, know at this point I’m kind of freaking out a little.

“Can you call someone to tell them to look out for the bag?” I ask, as I write down that it’s a small red lowepro backpack. How many of those can be going through security right now? Not that hard to keep an eye out for.

The agents still say nothing. The only thing they did say was in Malaysian and to each other.

Finally she got on the phone and called and asked that a security guard be sent down. She informed that he’ll come to handle the situation, that it’s not their responsibility, and that he might “be a little while”.

“Well, then I’m going to run up to security and look”, I said pointing to immigration.

“Fine, I’ll tell the security guard not to come,” she said slamming her hand to the phone.

Really, she’s not going to help me at all, and she won’t even allow me to help myself. After a few snappy comments back and forth she told me to just wait.

After a few minutes of waiting, and picturing my bag on the other side of immigration, I decided to abandon them and run up to the bag scanners at immigration. There were more people going that way after all.

 

I started to run that way when I saw Caroline coming back from the direction I was running to.

Then I noticed she had a bag in her hand and an old man walking with her.

 

Apparently she remembered that the bag left there belonged to an old man that originally was sitting in her row. Apparently he had also been seriously confused boarding the flight and she thought the most plausible situation was that he mistook it. She had also talked to the flight attendants, telling them she believed someone must have taken our bag by mistake, gesturing to the abandoned one still in the overhead compartment. The flight attendant replied, “Why don’t you take this abandoned one to the information desk and tell them what happened?”

“Uh…I’m…not going to take someone else’s bag,” she said awkwardly, feeling a little ironic about reminding a flight attendant that it’s not exactly acceptable to handle someone else’s luggage.

“Oh. Yes, of course not,” said the flight attendant.

So Caroline ran ahead to immigration and recognized the confused old man halfway down the hallway. She awkwardly ran up to his cart, spotting our bag, and told the man what had happened.

They had just found a staff member who could help him get his own bag when I ran into them. After seeing how relieved I was to see the bag he said with his head low, “I so sowry, I mayka beg mistake.”

Knowing that this was truly an accident and that the bag was found again, I was totally forgiving. If there was any doubt that swapping his empty bag with a very valuable bag was a mistake, the guy then proceeded to walk around the immigration security area without stamping his passport until a guard stopped him and redirected him to the line. He… was just not in his element.

It was probably pretty embarrassing for him and we both told him it was completely fine, and I didn’t tell him that I was close to killing AirAsia agents 3 minutes prior.

 

After it was done I quick turned around to tell the totally apathetic AirAsia agents working that the bag was found, and apologize for being snappy.

After 3 minutes of waiting for them to move a finger I said things like, “are you seriously not going to do anything?”, “you really can’t think of anyone to call to help identify my bag?”, and when a transitting passenger who was shocked to hear my bag was missing and inquired more I told them how every AirAsia staff member tells me to ask the next one and how caring about a stolen bag isn’t in the AirAsia job description… and how I’d been there for 5 minutes and they hand’t done anything.

All that was incredibly true, but being mean never helps, and I needed to apologize.

I said I was stressed because my bag was missing and I shouldn’t have been so snappy, and the one agent said no problem, and the other didn’t say anything. She was the one that was moody about calling a guard. Whatever.

 

Conclusion

So we walk out to baggage claim, where I quickly realized our bag wasn’t there. I confirmed with the bag office that it was actually going to Yangon and knew clean clothes and deodorant wasn’t going to be an option for me after my stressful jog.

The part that scares me though is that if someone wanted to steal my bag, it would have been so easy.

After the entire thing was over, there was still no guard, and of all the staff I tried to communicate, only the one moody agent even picked up the phone, and it was a call to delegate the responsibility to security. She honestly made zero attempts to help me, but to find someone who would help me.

No one even acted like they cared.

The only thing I could’ve done was gone renegade cop on KLIA2, which is what we did.

Seriously though. If someone realized I moved back a few rows, had moved my bag into their bag and took off, they could have made it to downtown KL before I could find an agent even willing to call a guard. I would’ve thought calling the check points and asking them to keep an eye for my bag would have been a request one of the 6 workers could have accommodated, and none of them could.

It was infuriating because I was completely helpless, and the people who could help were all dead-pan apathetic.

But, I think that’s how life is.

People always have the opportunity to steal stuff, and an airport is definitely not less secure than being on the street. The reason we’ve never had stuff stolen isn’t because of lack of opportunity, but because people are generally good.

I can’t tell you the number of times a taxi driver, or bus driver, or total stranger has been left with a bag of mine. The reason for not having stuff stolen isn’t my “street smarts”. Maybe it helps that I don’t own lots of flashy stuff or carry lots of money. Heck, I don’t even own a wallet.

I have faith in the goodness of people (for the most part), but certainly not in AirAsia or airport security systems.