After weeks and months of stalling, I got a reply. And it’s not a form letter. And it’s quite reasonable.

Thanks Bev. I appreciate this:

Unfortunately we cannot reconstruct the circumstances to determine the exact reasons why your bag was delayed. We have reviewed the file for your travel and it appears that your bag was delayed on arrival in Vancouver and therefore was not cleared through Customs. Delayed bags are sent to Customs for clearance when they do arrive and then subsequently given to the airline for return to the passenger.

Once the bag was given to us to forward, you moved to different temporary addresses and our staff did their best to reunite you with your bag. At one point the record shows that they contacted three Sheraton Hotels in Chicago to try to locate you but were unsuccessful. The bag was then sent to Calgary to await your return there.

For your future information, Mr. McCharles, our Central Baggage Office (CBO) staff are responsible for relaying information to our passengers. They do not search for and forward bags once they are located. This is the function of our airport employees who update the electronic file whenever they have information so that the CBO staff may pass it along. We appreciate your comments about the staff there as they are indeed very pleasant and hard-working people.

By way of explanation, most airlines us the same “world tracer” system to locate delayed bags. We share information in an attempt to find bags that may have been incorrectly forwarded to the wrong airport. The airline industry as a whole does not have systems that resemble those used by courier companies and the current technology does not allow bags to be tracked in the same way that a parcel may be tracked. Every airport is run by different airport authorities and therefore systems vary from airport to airport and do not communicate with each other, nor do they share a common database. Most airlines, therefore, have similar processes for locating and forwarding delayed luggage.

We must advise that there is no indication on the file that there was anything reported missing or damaged after the bag was returned to you.

We are very sorry, Mr. McCharles, for the inconvenience that you experienced as a result of this delay as it is our goal to have our passengers and their bags travel together. We regret that this did not occur on this occasion and trust that you will understand that we did our best to get the bag to you once it was located.

Sincerely,

Bev Johnston

Customer Service Manager

I wonder if Bev is one the 2000 employees given the pink slip by Air Canada Tuesday.

Don’t expect service to improve at Air Canada. Fly WestJet. Instead of cutting flights, WJ projects a 16.6 per cent increase in capacity in 2008 followed by an 8.5 per cent increase in capacity in 2009.

Air Canada’s loss could be WestJet’s gain