7 ms·

Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of luggage (2024)

221 points by thunderbong 8mo ago

aapoalas 8mo ago
I have very fond memories of Kansai airport. First time I went to Japan I ... Uhh, I didn't have a visa despite going there for exchange. The Kansai airport immigration office uttered a lot of "oohs" and "eehs", but they came through and in less than 45 minutes my appeal for deportation was accepted and I was granted a 1 year student visa. Always makes me happy when I pass through there :)
- kylecazar 8mo ago
  You showed up in Japan intending to stay for a year without a visa? Bold strategy :)
  - aapoalas 8mo ago
    I may have not properly read the paper that said "This is not a visa, you should apply for a visa using this paper"...
    - unscaled 8mo ago
      You probably had a CoE (Certificate of Eligibility to Reside in Japan, 在留資格認定証明書). This piece of paper needs to be taken to your local embassy or consulate and be converted to a visa there, which then gets stamped on your passport. But Japan is working quite differently from other countries here, so you're probably not the first person to be confused, although I don't think any country issues a long-term visa that is not stamped on your passport.
  - dathinab 8mo ago
    Bold strategy :) I don't think this was their "strategy", but more like a "young people are sometimes clueless and fail to take care of necessary things with enough buffer ahead of time" situations. And that (student + exchange program + in general eligible for a visa) is why it turned out well. Not sure if it still would do so today. The "cheap yen" tourism boom might have brought in money, but also a lot of annoyance with unpleasant tourists amplified by how modern recommendation algorithms work (you see all the rage bait "a tourist behaved mean" and non "normal tourist is polite and does nothing strange") and various propaganda amplifying this. In general there seem to be a ton of "make cities look way worse wrt. safety and cleanliness and blame it on tourists/immigrants/minorities" videos across most western countries in recent times (not just JP, e.g. London has a lot of such nonsense, it's quite safe, but if you ask ticktock it's a lawless crime zone. ).
    - protonbob 8mo ago
      > Theft From the Person offences have a crime rate of 8.21 reports per 1,000 people in London, which is 4.69 times the national average. This figure is calculated from 87,224 crime reports logged by Metropolitan Police during the 12-month period ending November 2025. https://crimerate.co.uk/london https://crimerate.co.uk/london That is more than Chicago. > In June 2025, there were 631 reported incidents (23.2 per 100,000) – a 49% reduction from the August 2023 peak. https://counciloncj.org/crime-in-chicago-what-you-need-to-know/ https://counciloncj.org/crime-in-chicago-what-you-need-to-kn...
      - dathinab 8mo ago
        the problem with your source is, that it treats all crime as equal. Like 1x pick pocketing == 1x homicide. It also ignores tourist, which attacks crime but also mostly very "minor" crime stuff(in places with dynamics like London). Then it ignores that in areas with larger amount of major crimes (like homicide) minors crimes with limited damages tend to be notoriously under-reported. Like if you police can't even resolve many homicide cases why bother reporting some pick pocketing? Londons homicide rate 2025 is ~1.1 per 100,000 (97 homicides, with a population around ~9.0M) Chicago is at 14.6~15 per 100.000 (411~417 homicides depending on source and if you count e.g. homicide in self defense, and ~2.7M population but also estimates differ in the 100_000s) Chicago has a homicide rate of 2025 is at 14.6 homicides per 100,000. So no Chicago isn't saver then London at all. Like think about it it has over 4x the total number of homicides while having less then a third the population. And sure homicides aren't all what matters, but given previous mentioned issues like minor crime often going unreported in very dangerous areas its a good point to get started with as it puts out a good "worst case bottom line". What you post is a good example is how by over simplifying statistics you can trivially abuse "facts" to convey a completely wrong meaning. EDIT: But yes, I'm also over-focusing on homicides here. Mainly due to lack of handling the rate of "unreported" crimes without any deeper research. If you aren't in a failed state or similar most homicides get reported. In addition crime isn't evenly spread over the city and the level of unevenness and placement of hot spots can also make a big difference to how safe it is in practice (as you can often avoid such hot spots).
dhosek 8mo ago
I feel like this is a challenge to me now. I will fly to and from your airport and you will lose my bag.
- alex_suzuki 8mo ago
  or at least i don’t want to see the goddamn handle, let me awkwardly turn my suitcase first!
- recursive 8mo ago
  > Lost baggage is when a passenger’s baggage is lost or goes missing due to an error on the part of the airport.
EuanReid 8mo ago
Headline's a bit misleading. They've never permanently lost a bag, and well done to them for that, but they've certainly lost them for periods of time. Just eventually found them.
- ghaff 8mo ago
  Permanent losses are pretty uncommon in general. Good for them for minimizing but having bags on the next flight or delayed for a couple/three days is way more common. Probably would have to be stolen which is rare, especially in Japan, I assume or end up in some weird location without a scan. Was flying into Narita once and I had checked luggage in part because I was carrying an award for a Japanese customer. I was sort of given a "we'll get back to you sooner or later." At which point I explained the situation to a supervisor I think and was much fluttering around and got the bag the next day.
  - bombcar 8mo ago
    Most of the "permanent losses" are because the passenger gives up or doesn't care terribly much - hence all the luggage at the airline outlet stores. Most airlines do eventually find the bag, and if you kept in touch they'll usually even get it to where you are, even if you've since returned.
    - ghaff 8mo ago
      I honestly have no idea how those dynamics work. At some point, the airline presumably pays, travel insurance does, or a combination of the two. At some point if it's just a bunch of old travel stuff, I guess I can see a customer shrugging, collecting the money, and dropping the whole thing.
      - notahacker 8mo ago
        I'm now imagining a situation in which a customer at the point of successfully making an insurance claim to pay for the nice new clothes they've bought themselves is infuriated to receive an email informing them that Kansai airport has found their luggage and will endeavour to deliver it to a hotel anywhere within the world within two days...
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
snowhale 8mo ago
[dead]
- teleforce 8mo ago
  >doesn't have that problem by construction. Thanks, going to borrow your words there for my civil engineering friends.
- jerlam 8mo ago
  Except Kansai has two terminals, but it's possible that each terminal's baggage processing is handled independently.
- gramie 8mo ago
  > doesn't have that problem by construction Well no, but it does have other significant construction problems! https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/japans-20b-kansai-airport-in-osaka-sinking-at-an-alarming-rate-experts https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/japans-20b-kansai-airport...
arvindkumarc 8mo ago
How is this stat even useful?
- amiga386 8mo ago
  It sets a verified lower bound on baggage loss. An achieveable ideal that other airports should aspire to. Lots of orgs claim to aspire to 5 nines of uptime but can barely manage 2 nines. Kansai airport with an average of about 17 million pax/yr [0] hasn't lost any luggage. Losing one item out of, say, 10 million items a year, would be 7 nines. [0] https://www.kansai-airports.co.jp/en/business/in-figures/ https://www.kansai-airports.co.jp/en/business/in-figures/
succo 8mo ago
They lost mine! but they found it and brought it to me 2 days later at my door on the other side of Japan. Mind blowing efficiency
- Barbing 8mo ago
  I wonder with which companies they partner for those deliveries. Maybe they went with Japan's biggest courier or well, I'm sure they don't do it in house...
sparkie 8mo ago
My luggage was missing when I landed at KIX. But it wasn't the airport's fault - my luggage was still in Amsterdam. Arrived <24 hours later and they delivered it to my hotel in Osaka.
- ghaff 8mo ago
  In my experience, that's far and away the most common scenario. Luggage misses a connection, doesn't get on a flight that has ben changed because of weather, or otherwise ends up somewhere it's not supposed to be. Many airline tracking systems are better than they used to be but AirTags or equivalent are not a bad idea.
- lilytweed 8mo ago
  I once had SAS lose my luggage on a direct flight from Copenhagen to Tokyo Haneda. I was sure that such a thing was impossible, but I learned an important lesson that day.
  - aix1 8mo ago
    Weird things do happen. I was once looking out of an airplane window waiting for takeoff when I saw my suitcase getting offloaded from the hold and taken back to the terminal. Spoke to the crew, who spoke to ground staff, who brought the bag back. Not the slightest idea what it was all about... (I'm guessing some sort of mix-up in which they thought I'd failed to board?)
lysace 8mo ago
I once flew with ANA to Tokyo/Haneda in First with a rewards-paid ticket for crazy cheap. When I got there and picked up my luggage there was a tag on it, asking me to go to some specific desk. I did. The luggage was a bit janky, but that happens. They very seriously apologized for breaking my bag. They asked me how much it had cost. I said "around $40, it was just something cheap". A minute later I was sort of ceremoniously handed an envelope with japanese yen notes worth that much.
- adrian_b 8mo ago
  In Europe, the airlines have broken my checked baggage about 3 times, in places like Vienna, and those had been reasonably solid suitcases. Obviously, nobody ever offered a compensation. There is no wonder that such things happen, because at many airports I have seen how the baggage handlers throw the baggage through the air into the vehicles that carry the baggage to the airplanes, even over a distance of a few meters, instead of depositing it gently into the vehicle. Therefore I never put anything fragile in a checked baggage.
jakub_g 8mo ago
> In early December, a 35-year-old passenger from Tanzania was impressed to see that all the handles of the suitcases on the conveyor belt in the baggage claim area were facing the passengers. > After the luggage is unloaded and collected in the cargo handling area upon arrival at the airport, ground support personnel manually align the handles of the bags and place them on the conveyor belt. That's a level of attention to detail that we should be striving for in everything we build.
- afavour 8mo ago
  I think it also highlights something: better things are possible. Zero lost suitcases doesn't require magic to achieve. It just requires enough workers or enough time to make sure each worker is able to do their job successfully. Unfortunately financial and time constraints mean that very often there aren't enough workers or enough time, and some passengers suffer.
  - ToucanLoucan 8mo ago
    Oh why even mention time constraints, we all know damn well it's financial. Every corp on the face of the earth is constantly cost-cutting everything to the bone to justify more bonuses and higher executive compensation, while making sure the service or products provided are just barely good enough where people don't stage outright riots. In the sixties, the C-suite earned 21 times what the line worker did. In 2024 it's almost 300 times. So every single time you're dealing with a product that's been value-engineered to where it barely functions, or service people paid too little and empowered too little to actually help you, or stuck in a long ass line because they won't hire enough people, or stuck talking to some damn robot because people are expensive, it's beyond a safe bet that you have an executive or several to blame.
    - rectang 8mo ago
      We should be spreading our cynicism over both management and customers. There is almost no level of service so terrible that people won't buy cheaper airline tickets. Let alone losing luggage, you could dial up the risk of death and people would still buy the cheaper tickets.
adrian_b 8mo ago
When traveling to Japan, I did not have the slightest problem with lost baggage, either at airports, or with the Japanese services that allow you to send your baggage from one hotel to another, to be able to travel more lightly. However, at the airport, when flying back home I had an unexpected experience. At my final destination, when I retrieved my checked baggage in the airport, it no longer had the padlock that it had at check in, in Japan. I assume that this happened because at the airport, after check in, they have cut the padlock, to inspect the baggage. I also assume that the inspection was caused by a big kitchen knife that was in the baggage. The kitchen knife had been bought from a shop from Osaka, and it was well sealed inside the original package closed by the shop, but this would not be seen at an X-ray machine. There was nothing else in the baggage that could be suspicious. In any case, if they inspected the baggage to check the knife, it was done carefully, and the content of the baggage was in the exact same positions as after packing.
- apetresc 8mo ago
  Why would a knife be a problem in a checked bag, even if it hadn't been sealed in the original package?
  - fusslo 8mo ago
    I've asked TSA people similar questions when they checked my bag. He said that the item was blocking view of what was underneath it. I'd guess it's not the packaging, but a big piece of steel blocking the xray view.
    - gib444 8mo ago
      The x-ray machine aren't 360? If 360, I wonder does the operator perhaps not trust it?
      - fusslo 8mo ago
        probably different fidelity of scanner, I'd guess. This was in 2018-2019
rectang 8mo ago
Applying cost-cutting analysis as an intellectual exercise... Airline ticket sales are so price driven that for much of the market, losing some percentage of bags won't change purchase decisions. I wonder if it's possible to identify which bags are from budget customers and for Kansai Airport to cut corners for those, accepting a certain loss percentage and saving money. It may not be: > In addition to monitoring bags with sensors, employees also patrol the area to check for dropped bags. According to the airport management company, this additional step significantly reduces the risk of lost baggage. I think you either patrol for all dropped bags or give up the patrols entirely, assuming that bags from first-class and budget passengers end up in the same area.
kseniamorph 8mo ago
Visited Kansai recently and a few things stood out. Passport control was fully automated: just scanned and walked through. Security flagged something in my bag and resolved it really fast without slowing down the line. It's a small thing, but it's the kind of operational detail that makes a real difference. My travel experience has never been smoother. Makes me wonder why more airports don't get this right.
renecito 8mo ago
it't not lost until you stop looking for it :D
hknceykbx 8mo ago
Yes it all comes to the culture. But we need to take into account that Japanese culture for the workers themselves is absolutely horrible. Is all that suffering worth not losing a bunch of luggage or getting a train exactly the minute you expect? Not for me at least. I think it’s better to cope with imperfections like that than to work in a toxic environment where you can’t leave the office until your boss leaves. That same culture is the reason why we don’t hear about successful startups from Japan. God forbid there is a single bug in it. But what’s better - to have a software with a bug and not the cleanest code or not to have it at all? Hardware is another story of course. But my point is that there is both good and bad in any culture. Depends on how you look at it
jopython 8mo ago
High Trust Society!
Tor3 8mo ago
One of my (two) suitcases was lost once when I flew to Japan. But I didn't have to find out by waiting forever at the conveyor belt until I realized that. Instead, when I left the airplane a person was there waiting for me, just outside the door, and explained to me that unfortunately one of my suitcases was missing. It was now in Shanghai instead of Japan. The person then walked with me to the immigration area, and then met up with me in the baggage hall afterwards, and took me to the right place to fill out the missing luggage papers, and explaining that if I could give the address of my place to stay in Kanji it would be easier. And the suitcase did arrive at my door the next day. And, of course, in the baggage area itself.. a person from the airline was standing in front of where the bags come out and preventing them from banging into the side when they came down the slide. Needless to say, but I've been travelling all over the world for decades and something like the above I've never seen anywhere else. Missed luggage uncountable number of times, many destroyed and damaged suitcases of course.. but that's elsewhere.
- Neywiny 8mo ago
  I'm pretty sure the last time I flew spirit I saw a handler protecting the suitcases. Either that or another airline, but even then Southwest or United, nothing fancy.
ranger_danger 8mo ago
Japan has a long history of simply not reporting things (including serious crimes) because it makes their stats look bad. Go read some of the japan-related subreddits and they are all full of stories of people getting harassed/assaulted/etc. (or worse) and the police just absolutely refuse to do anything about it. Getting them to file a report for any reason is extremely difficult. And if someone does end up getting arrested for any reason, the entire judicial system is unfair and unnecessarily cruel and inhumane. They can hold you for up to 23 days with zero reason and zero outside contact. Many innocent people's lives have been completely ruined due to this for no good reason. They viciously interrogate people trying to demand confessions no matter how innocent you might seem, because again, it makes their conviction numbers look good. Don't get me wrong, I've been to Japan many times and I thoroughly enjoy all the good things about it, but just like every country, there are a number of quite bad things as well.

221 points by thunderbong 8mo ago

I have very fond memories of Kansai airport. First time I went to Japan I ... Uhh, I didn't have a visa despite going there for exchange. The Kansai airport immigration office uttered a lot of "oohs" and "eehs", but they came through and in less than 45 minutes my appeal for deportation was accepted and I was granted a 1 year student visa. Always makes me happy when I pass through there :)

kylecazar 8mo ago
You showed up in Japan intending to stay for a year without a visa? Bold strategy :)
- aapoalas 8mo ago
  I may have not properly read the paper that said "This is not a visa, you should apply for a visa using this paper"...
  - unscaled 8mo ago
    You probably had a CoE (Certificate of Eligibility to Reside in Japan, 在留資格認定証明書). This piece of paper needs to be taken to your local embassy or consulate and be converted to a visa there, which then gets stamped on your passport. But Japan is working quite differently from other countries here, so you're probably not the first person to be confused, although I don't think any country issues a long-term visa that is not stamped on your passport.
- dathinab 8mo ago
  Bold strategy :) I don't think this was their "strategy", but more like a "young people are sometimes clueless and fail to take care of necessary things with enough buffer ahead of time" situations. And that (student + exchange program + in general eligible for a visa) is why it turned out well. Not sure if it still would do so today. The "cheap yen" tourism boom might have brought in money, but also a lot of annoyance with unpleasant tourists amplified by how modern recommendation algorithms work (you see all the rage bait "a tourist behaved mean" and non "normal tourist is polite and does nothing strange") and various propaganda amplifying this. In general there seem to be a ton of "make cities look way worse wrt. safety and cleanliness and blame it on tourists/immigrants/minorities" videos across most western countries in recent times (not just JP, e.g. London has a lot of such nonsense, it's quite safe, but if you ask ticktock it's a lawless crime zone. ).
  - protonbob 8mo ago
    > Theft From the Person offences have a crime rate of 8.21 reports per 1,000 people in London, which is 4.69 times the national average. This figure is calculated from 87,224 crime reports logged by Metropolitan Police during the 12-month period ending November 2025. https://crimerate.co.uk/london https://crimerate.co.uk/london That is more than Chicago. > In June 2025, there were 631 reported incidents (23.2 per 100,000) – a 49% reduction from the August 2023 peak. https://counciloncj.org/crime-in-chicago-what-you-need-to-know/ https://counciloncj.org/crime-in-chicago-what-you-need-to-kn...
    - dathinab 8mo ago
      the problem with your source is, that it treats all crime as equal. Like 1x pick pocketing == 1x homicide. It also ignores tourist, which attacks crime but also mostly very "minor" crime stuff(in places with dynamics like London). Then it ignores that in areas with larger amount of major crimes (like homicide) minors crimes with limited damages tend to be notoriously under-reported. Like if you police can't even resolve many homicide cases why bother reporting some pick pocketing? Londons homicide rate 2025 is ~1.1 per 100,000 (97 homicides, with a population around ~9.0M) Chicago is at 14.6~15 per 100.000 (411~417 homicides depending on source and if you count e.g. homicide in self defense, and ~2.7M population but also estimates differ in the 100_000s) Chicago has a homicide rate of 2025 is at 14.6 homicides per 100,000. So no Chicago isn't saver then London at all. Like think about it it has over 4x the total number of homicides while having less then a third the population. And sure homicides aren't all what matters, but given previous mentioned issues like minor crime often going unreported in very dangerous areas its a good point to get started with as it puts out a good "worst case bottom line". What you post is a good example is how by over simplifying statistics you can trivially abuse "facts" to convey a completely wrong meaning. EDIT: But yes, I'm also over-focusing on homicides here. Mainly due to lack of handling the rate of "unreported" crimes without any deeper research. If you aren't in a failed state or similar most homicides get reported. In addition crime isn't evenly spread over the city and the level of unevenness and placement of hot spots can also make a big difference to how safe it is in practice (as you can often avoid such hot spots).

dhosek 8mo ago

I feel like this is a challenge to me now. I will fly to and from your airport and you will lose my bag.

alex_suzuki 8mo ago
or at least i don’t want to see the goddamn handle, let me awkwardly turn my suitcase first!
recursive 8mo ago
> Lost baggage is when a passenger’s baggage is lost or goes missing due to an error on the part of the airport.

EuanReid 8mo ago

Headline's a bit misleading. They've never permanently lost a bag, and well done to them for that, but they've certainly lost them for periods of time. Just eventually found them.

ghaff 8mo ago
Permanent losses are pretty uncommon in general. Good for them for minimizing but having bags on the next flight or delayed for a couple/three days is way more common. Probably would have to be stolen which is rare, especially in Japan, I assume or end up in some weird location without a scan. Was flying into Narita once and I had checked luggage in part because I was carrying an award for a Japanese customer. I was sort of given a "we'll get back to you sooner or later." At which point I explained the situation to a supervisor I think and was much fluttering around and got the bag the next day.
- bombcar 8mo ago
  Most of the "permanent losses" are because the passenger gives up or doesn't care terribly much - hence all the luggage at the airline outlet stores. Most airlines do eventually find the bag, and if you kept in touch they'll usually even get it to where you are, even if you've since returned.
  - ghaff 8mo ago
    I honestly have no idea how those dynamics work. At some point, the airline presumably pays, travel insurance does, or a combination of the two. At some point if it's just a bunch of old travel stuff, I guess I can see a customer shrugging, collecting the money, and dropping the whole thing.
    - notahacker 8mo ago
      I'm now imagining a situation in which a customer at the point of successfully making an insurance claim to pay for the nice new clothes they've bought themselves is infuriated to receive an email informing them that Kansai airport has found their luggage and will endeavour to deliver it to a hotel anywhere within the world within two days...

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

snowhale 8mo ago

[dead]

teleforce 8mo ago
>doesn't have that problem by construction. Thanks, going to borrow your words there for my civil engineering friends.
jerlam 8mo ago
Except Kansai has two terminals, but it's possible that each terminal's baggage processing is handled independently.
gramie 8mo ago
> doesn't have that problem by construction Well no, but it does have other significant construction problems! https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/japans-20b-kansai-airport-in-osaka-sinking-at-an-alarming-rate-experts https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/japans-20b-kansai-airport...

arvindkumarc 8mo ago

How is this stat even useful?

amiga386 8mo ago
It sets a verified lower bound on baggage loss. An achieveable ideal that other airports should aspire to. Lots of orgs claim to aspire to 5 nines of uptime but can barely manage 2 nines. Kansai airport with an average of about 17 million pax/yr [0] hasn't lost any luggage. Losing one item out of, say, 10 million items a year, would be 7 nines. [0] https://www.kansai-airports.co.jp/en/business/in-figures/ https://www.kansai-airports.co.jp/en/business/in-figures/

succo 8mo ago

They lost mine! but they found it and brought it to me 2 days later at my door on the other side of Japan. Mind blowing efficiency

Barbing 8mo ago
I wonder with which companies they partner for those deliveries. Maybe they went with Japan's biggest courier or well, I'm sure they don't do it in house...

sparkie 8mo ago

My luggage was missing when I landed at KIX. But it wasn't the airport's fault - my luggage was still in Amsterdam. Arrived <24 hours later and they delivered it to my hotel in Osaka.

ghaff 8mo ago
In my experience, that's far and away the most common scenario. Luggage misses a connection, doesn't get on a flight that has ben changed because of weather, or otherwise ends up somewhere it's not supposed to be. Many airline tracking systems are better than they used to be but AirTags or equivalent are not a bad idea.
lilytweed 8mo ago
I once had SAS lose my luggage on a direct flight from Copenhagen to Tokyo Haneda. I was sure that such a thing was impossible, but I learned an important lesson that day.
- aix1 8mo ago
  Weird things do happen. I was once looking out of an airplane window waiting for takeoff when I saw my suitcase getting offloaded from the hold and taken back to the terminal. Spoke to the crew, who spoke to ground staff, who brought the bag back. Not the slightest idea what it was all about... (I'm guessing some sort of mix-up in which they thought I'd failed to board?)

lysace 8mo ago

I once flew with ANA to Tokyo/Haneda in First with a rewards-paid ticket for crazy cheap. When I got there and picked up my luggage there was a tag on it, asking me to go to some specific desk. I did. The luggage was a bit janky, but that happens. They very seriously apologized for breaking my bag. They asked me how much it had cost. I said "around $40, it was just something cheap". A minute later I was sort of ceremoniously handed an envelope with japanese yen notes worth that much.

adrian_b 8mo ago
In Europe, the airlines have broken my checked baggage about 3 times, in places like Vienna, and those had been reasonably solid suitcases. Obviously, nobody ever offered a compensation. There is no wonder that such things happen, because at many airports I have seen how the baggage handlers throw the baggage through the air into the vehicles that carry the baggage to the airplanes, even over a distance of a few meters, instead of depositing it gently into the vehicle. Therefore I never put anything fragile in a checked baggage.

jakub_g 8mo ago

> In early December, a 35-year-old passenger from Tanzania was impressed to see that all the handles of the suitcases on the conveyor belt in the baggage claim area were facing the passengers. > After the luggage is unloaded and collected in the cargo handling area upon arrival at the airport, ground support personnel manually align the handles of the bags and place them on the conveyor belt. That's a level of attention to detail that we should be striving for in everything we build.

afavour 8mo ago
I think it also highlights something: better things are possible. Zero lost suitcases doesn't require magic to achieve. It just requires enough workers or enough time to make sure each worker is able to do their job successfully. Unfortunately financial and time constraints mean that very often there aren't enough workers or enough time, and some passengers suffer.
- ToucanLoucan 8mo ago
  Oh why even mention time constraints, we all know damn well it's financial. Every corp on the face of the earth is constantly cost-cutting everything to the bone to justify more bonuses and higher executive compensation, while making sure the service or products provided are just barely good enough where people don't stage outright riots. In the sixties, the C-suite earned 21 times what the line worker did. In 2024 it's almost 300 times. So every single time you're dealing with a product that's been value-engineered to where it barely functions, or service people paid too little and empowered too little to actually help you, or stuck in a long ass line because they won't hire enough people, or stuck talking to some damn robot because people are expensive, it's beyond a safe bet that you have an executive or several to blame.
  - rectang 8mo ago
    We should be spreading our cynicism over both management and customers. There is almost no level of service so terrible that people won't buy cheaper airline tickets. Let alone losing luggage, you could dial up the risk of death and people would still buy the cheaper tickets.

adrian_b 8mo ago

When traveling to Japan, I did not have the slightest problem with lost baggage, either at airports, or with the Japanese services that allow you to send your baggage from one hotel to another, to be able to travel more lightly. However, at the airport, when flying back home I had an unexpected experience. At my final destination, when I retrieved my checked baggage in the airport, it no longer had the padlock that it had at check in, in Japan. I assume that this happened because at the airport, after check in, they have cut the padlock, to inspect the baggage. I also assume that the inspection was caused by a big kitchen knife that was in the baggage. The kitchen knife had been bought from a shop from Osaka, and it was well sealed inside the original package closed by the shop, but this would not be seen at an X-ray machine. There was nothing else in the baggage that could be suspicious. In any case, if they inspected the baggage to check the knife, it was done carefully, and the content of the baggage was in the exact same positions as after packing.

apetresc 8mo ago
Why would a knife be a problem in a checked bag, even if it hadn't been sealed in the original package?
- fusslo 8mo ago
  I've asked TSA people similar questions when they checked my bag. He said that the item was blocking view of what was underneath it. I'd guess it's not the packaging, but a big piece of steel blocking the xray view.
  - gib444 8mo ago
    The x-ray machine aren't 360? If 360, I wonder does the operator perhaps not trust it?
    - fusslo 8mo ago
      probably different fidelity of scanner, I'd guess. This was in 2018-2019

rectang 8mo ago

Applying cost-cutting analysis as an intellectual exercise... Airline ticket sales are so price driven that for much of the market, losing some percentage of bags won't change purchase decisions. I wonder if it's possible to identify which bags are from budget customers and for Kansai Airport to cut corners for those, accepting a certain loss percentage and saving money. It may not be: > In addition to monitoring bags with sensors, employees also patrol the area to check for dropped bags. According to the airport management company, this additional step significantly reduces the risk of lost baggage. I think you either patrol for all dropped bags or give up the patrols entirely, assuming that bags from first-class and budget passengers end up in the same area.

kseniamorph 8mo ago

Visited Kansai recently and a few things stood out. Passport control was fully automated: just scanned and walked through. Security flagged something in my bag and resolved it really fast without slowing down the line. It's a small thing, but it's the kind of operational detail that makes a real difference. My travel experience has never been smoother. Makes me wonder why more airports don't get this right.

renecito 8mo ago

it't not lost until you stop looking for it :D

hknceykbx 8mo ago

Yes it all comes to the culture. But we need to take into account that Japanese culture for the workers themselves is absolutely horrible. Is all that suffering worth not losing a bunch of luggage or getting a train exactly the minute you expect? Not for me at least. I think it’s better to cope with imperfections like that than to work in a toxic environment where you can’t leave the office until your boss leaves. That same culture is the reason why we don’t hear about successful startups from Japan. God forbid there is a single bug in it. But what’s better - to have a software with a bug and not the cleanest code or not to have it at all? Hardware is another story of course. But my point is that there is both good and bad in any culture. Depends on how you look at it

jopython 8mo ago

High Trust Society!

Tor3 8mo ago

One of my (two) suitcases was lost once when I flew to Japan. But I didn't have to find out by waiting forever at the conveyor belt until I realized that. Instead, when I left the airplane a person was there waiting for me, just outside the door, and explained to me that unfortunately one of my suitcases was missing. It was now in Shanghai instead of Japan. The person then walked with me to the immigration area, and then met up with me in the baggage hall afterwards, and took me to the right place to fill out the missing luggage papers, and explaining that if I could give the address of my place to stay in Kanji it would be easier. And the suitcase did arrive at my door the next day. And, of course, in the baggage area itself.. a person from the airline was standing in front of where the bags come out and preventing them from banging into the side when they came down the slide. Needless to say, but I've been travelling all over the world for decades and something like the above I've never seen anywhere else. Missed luggage uncountable number of times, many destroyed and damaged suitcases of course.. but that's elsewhere.

Neywiny 8mo ago
I'm pretty sure the last time I flew spirit I saw a handler protecting the suitcases. Either that or another airline, but even then Southwest or United, nothing fancy.

ranger_danger 8mo ago

Japan has a long history of simply not reporting things (including serious crimes) because it makes their stats look bad. Go read some of the japan-related subreddits and they are all full of stories of people getting harassed/assaulted/etc. (or worse) and the police just absolutely refuse to do anything about it. Getting them to file a report for any reason is extremely difficult. And if someone does end up getting arrested for any reason, the entire judicial system is unfair and unnecessarily cruel and inhumane. They can hold you for up to 23 days with zero reason and zero outside contact. Many innocent people's lives have been completely ruined due to this for no good reason. They viciously interrogate people trying to demand confessions no matter how innocent you might seem, because again, it makes their conviction numbers look good. Don't get me wrong, I've been to Japan many times and I thoroughly enjoy all the good things about it, but just like every country, there are a number of quite bad things as well.