My favorite luggage tale happened at Christmas time, 2008. My family of five had spent a week sunning and diving in Grenada in the southern Caribbean. Air Jamaica has direct service from Grenada. Upon arriving at JFK, the 200+ coach passengers gathered around the carousel. After a long wait, only first class bags appeared. Perhaps 20 bags came down the chute. Certainly, we thought, our bags would follow. How wrong that thought was. Apparently, the ground crew in Grenada had not loaded a single coach bag. At 11 PM that night there were 240 angry coach passengers confronting a grand total of 2 agents from Air Jamaica. Not only did the crew in Grenada not load any bags, but they failed to notify the crew at JFK that extra staff would be needed that night to process the passengers and their missing luggage. While our bags arrived 3 days later on FedEx, the cost to the airline to ship over 300 suitcases must have been enormous.
While I rarely take the airline magazine with me, on this occasion I carried the Air Jamaica monthly in my knapsack. In the magazine was an article written by the director of customer service for Air Jamaica. In her article she stated, “our goal this holiday season is zero lost bags.” Obviously, her lofty goal had gone down in flames. Working my way through the Air Jamaica messaging system at their home base in Kingston, Jamaica, I reached her personally to let her know about the luggage disaster. Her first comment was, “you are not supposed to reach me, personally!” (an unusual comment from the head of customer service). After regaining her composure, she assured me she would look into the incident and get back to me. Eighteen months later I am still awaiting her call.
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