Left luggage/baggage storage at airports.

[randomness]

Adding to the list of facilities all major airports should have is a left luggage office. This is one of those services that in many places has been discontinued in the name of "security". Given that airports like London Gatwick and Lima Jorge Chávez have managed to keep their baggage storage offices running in the face of rather extreme terrorist threat--the ones at Gatwick have luggage scanners to make sure you're not trying to store explosives or something--I wonder about the "security" excuse.

Left luggage, showers, sleep cubicles...there are probably lots of other features I'm forgetting that would be really useful to have at an airport. I mean, aside from the basic services airports generally do provide.

Any features you'd like to see at an airport?

Comments

[boosette.livejournal.com]

I know the answer to this one! Which is, it depends on the airline and the airport. (I know this, unfortunately, due to Air France losing a bag of AV equipment for my work this past summer.)

The airline holds onto it for a while -- if there's an external tag, they'll call the number on that tag. If there's no external tag, they'll sit on it for a while (could be weeks), and eventually open the luggage looking for contact information, the idea being that hopefully someone will call them. Which is nigh on impossible, when you need a specific airline at a specific airport -- I wound up calling the airport general line, and getting put through to the airline baggage desk (eventually acquiring their direct line), and being grumpy at them until they physically walked down to the baggage holding area to look for our bag.

Said baggage holding area is small, and once it gets overfull, the bags get sent off to a place like Unclaimed Baggage Center (http://unclaimedbaggage.com/) for pennies on the dollar.

(As for me, I'd like to see more airports with free or reasonably-priced wifi. Like, if I have a 45 minute layover, I do not need to pay $10 for a day-pass, thanks very much St Louis International Airport.)