Alaska Airlines in San Jose International airport has a bit of a problem after its employees were filmed throwing suitcases on a concrete war in a contest akin to tossing the caber. In this case it was a rolling bag, but the concept appears the same.
The airline may be faced with more than just bad publicity. What is interesting is that the incident has drawn attention to an illegal practice in the industry where passengers are told that any damage to baggage parts like zippers and wheels are excluded from liability. The federal law says precisely the opposite.
On Nov. 25, the Department of Transportation issued a notice to airlines that inspections “uncovered the fact that certain airlines routinely exclude liability for damage to specific parts of checked baggage.” Under federal law, carriers are responsible for reimbursing damage incurred to handles, zippers, wheels and other exterior parts of luggage left in their care.
Airlines have until Jan. 9, 2016 to review and, if necessary, revise their checked baggage liability policies. Otherwise they may face fines.
Alaska Airlines may want to also review the suitcase toss competitions as outside of federal guidelines. I can only imagine the competition with Sumo bags.
Union rules will protect all of them, while they remain at home, with full pay, for the 14-18 months it will take to “adjudicate” their case via the appropriate process and the multiple appeals processes. They’ll be found not to have violated union rules and will be returned to work (as heroes of the working man against the while-collar overlord).
Maybe the elevator moving belt thingy was broken. This was just one video. Often ppl improvise when their equipment is missing or broken. Its called “american exceptionalism” or innovation.
Airports do not throw luggage as a way of handling or moving it. Nobody is expected to catch thrown luggage as part of their job. Jesus Christ.
Disappointed – Alaska Air is always my first go-to when deciding which airlines to fly. I’ve always had good experiences with them. Hope this was more of a rogue employee and not part of their culture.
davidm2575,
The American principle of freedom and self-reliance precludes Marx’s incoherent and physically
false “equality.”
Marx posits everyone equal as long as there are hard working, wealth-creating citizens to confiscatorily tax
so the poor, poor “victimized” parasites can feed at the public teat.
Without the hard-working, free-enterprise, private market wealth creators, there can be no Marxist
faux “equality.”
The Atlas Paradox of Ayn Rand fame.
Dependent, pot-smoking freeloaders like Obama would not even exist without hard-working, private sector,
wealth creators.
I could be wrong here, but it seems to me that a male worker is trying to teach a female worker how to throw the luggage far enough to be caught. The female worker just doesn’t have enough strength to make it happen, which is going to mess up the speed of their baggage system. I wonder if affirmative action for gender hiring is at play here with the equal pay for equal work thing going on.
Put the capitalist interests and their minions under as much regulation as we peasants have to go through at airport “security” and this sort of thing might stop.
Karl, I had trouble with that, too. Looks like there isn’t enough work for the number of employees so they lots of time to mess around.
“on a concrete war in a contest akin to tossing the caber”
Huh?
I have always suspected that a lot of things like this happen at airports
The Science Geek
http://www.thesciencegeek.org
I think Alaska Air might have outsourced the baggage handling in at least some airports – seems to me I remember some sort of a stink about that at SeaTac – and yes the bag does not care who pitches it – – I don’t really fly anymore but used to fly a lot (several times a week) on Alaska Air and they always did a great job – sad to read about this crap
Time to install motion sensors in luggage
Shocking but so pleased that this damage comes out of the airlines bottom line according to Federal Law.
You think that’s bad wait until you buy a ticket from one airline and get stuck one United or United Commuter. I’ve seen that done to laptop cases that wouldn’t fit in the extra glove compartment size small overhead bins while most of the bins were filled with crew luggage.
Do they let the passengers get in on the action?
William Edwards Deming
Statistical Quality Control
Statistical Process Control
In-Process-Monitoring
Product Inspection
It’s elementary, my dear Watson.
Alaska Airlines is always at, or near the top in rankings. I’ve flown them a couple times and was pleased. This type of crap goes on w/ all airlines.