Every year SITA, a world leader in the Aviation information and systems industry, publish a report about airline baggage.

Here are a few highlights from the latest one:

• Last year, airlines carried more than 4.5 billion passengers.
• Around 80% of passengers checked in one or more bags.
• 25 million bags were delayed, damaged, lost or stolen.
• That’s an average of 1-2 bags per average flight.
• About half of the problems occur during transfers at airports.
• Around 1.3 million bags were never found again.
• This costs airlines over $2.0 billion to manage or correct.
• TRACE ME has a success rate at preventing lost luggage that is almost 100 times better than this. Let us help you avoid becoming a statistic.

Q. What happens to unclaimed lost luggage? A. It goes to auction!

In America, nearly every airport has its own auction house! The Unclaimed Baggage Centre in Alabama receives 800,000 visitors per year and is, incredibly, the state’s biggest tourist attraction.

In the UK, Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton, Stansted, Manchester and Glasgow Airports all use Auction Houses to sell unclaimed lost luggage.

In Australia, Sydney Airport holds an annual charity lost property auction when thousands of items go under the hammer – ln 2015 their auction raised more than $234,000 for charity.

In Germany, Frankfurt airport auctions off lost luggage after 3 months.

Amsterdam Netherlands Schiphol Airport — The auction-house “De Eland” in Diemen has hosted past lost baggage auctions. Every three months or so, all the lost and unclaimed baggage that Schiphol has collected gets sent to this one auction-house.