Where Does Unlcaimed Baggage End Up

Where does unclaimed baggage end up? While you are rushing around the baggage claim after a long flight just itching to grab your luggage and get home, you may not see the wayward bags sitting near the back of the room all alone with no one to claim them. While airlines may hold on to these bags for a few days in hopes of reuniting them with their owners, they cannot stay there forever.

First stop: storage central

Most airlines have a central location designed specifically to store lost luggage. Since the companies are on the hook for potentially thousands of dollars per bag, they want to do whatever they can to find each bag's rightful owner. These suitcases might spend two months or more in the warehouse waiting for their rightful owner to reclaim them.

All for a good cause

Some airlines eventually give up on finding the owner of a bag and decide to give the suitcase and its contents up for charity. While it is possible to sell the bags to salvage companies, the earnings on these deals are often so minimal that it is not worth the man hours to get the deals done. Instead, these companies give everything to a local charity and let them sell the items second hand in order to earn some much needed funds.

Lost bag nirvana

Other bags come to their final resting place in Scottsboro, Alabama, home of the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Airlines earn a small rate per bag, regardless of what is inside. The employees at the center painstakingly sort and track every item to put for sale in their mammoth store that is a city attraction in Scottsboro. Millions of lost treasures are sold off the shelves of the Unclaimed Baggage Center, making it perhaps the most profitable second hand store in the world.

While airlines do all they can to keep customers happy and avoid insurance claims, they simply cannot find each and every owner for the multitudes of stray bags. Luckily, in the end even the most obscure item is not just thrown away.