Authorities said two supervisors and three workers had been sacked since the video surfaced online. It has been viewed around 80,000 times.
Ground staff at the Milan Bergamo Airport in Italy were caught throwing baggage onto a Ryanair aircraft last year, filmed by a passenger on another plane nearby.
Back in 2008, one YouTube user uploaded a worrying video of a baggage worker from an unnamed airport slamming a series of bags onto a conveyor belt, while some were thrown onto the ground.
In 2009, a passenger on a Continental Airlines flight at Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey filmed a baggage handler “abusing the passengers’ luggage” in an “appalling” way by forcefully throwing bags off of a conveyor belt near the plane.
The worker appeared to change her demeanor after she seemed to have been alerted by another worker that passengers have been watching her all along.
In 2011, another YouTube user posted a video of another baggage handler for Continental Airlines doing more of the same, while another furiously threw a series of boxes onto a cart, showing no sign of care or caution.
A video of baggage handlers at an airport in Bangladesh carelessly and forcefully throwing a trail of packaged boxes (inside of which could potentially be anything fragile from a newly ordered mobile phone to a laptop) onto a loading platform was posted on YouTube. The staff seemed not to care where they landed or whether they fell off the platform.
One video of a small suitcase left behind on the grounds of the airport apron at Dallas Forth Worth International Airport highlighted the obliviousness and apathy of ground staff, as a worker drives past the suitcase which appeared to be clearly in view of his path.
One of the most creative reactions to the growing issue of mistreated luggage was by the musician Dave Carroll, a United Airlines passenger whose $3,500 guitar was found severely damaged when he arrived at his destination in Omaha, Nebraska. Fellow passengers on the flight had claimed baggage handlers were seen throwing guitars around during a stopover in O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
• Praise for the airport that never loses your luggage
The issue led Mr Carroll to file a compensation claim with United Airlines that was rejected for not having been filed within 24 hours of the incident, which was apparently the airline’s standard policy for such claims.
Unsatisfied, to say the least, with the airline’s response, Mr Carroll wrote a trilogy of songs titled “United Breaks Guitars”, the first of which was released in July of 2009 and was the number one song on iTunes in the week following its release.
He also created music videos for each of the songs posted on YouTube, the first of which received nearly 150,000 views in one day. The lyrics of the songs, such as "I should have flown with someone else, or gone by car, 'cause United breaks guitars”, take a humorous poke at the flaws of the airline, while the final lyric of the third song revealed a glimmer of hope : “They say that you're [United] changing and I hope you do, 'Cause if you don't then who would fly with you?".
• Travel advice: damaged luggage
The songs prompted United to contact Mr Carroll in a belated attempt to right the wrong done to him. He was eventually offered $3,000 for the damage, which was donated to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz as a “gesture of goodwill”.
As if the manner in which the luggage is handled isn’t worrying enough, baggage handlers at Miami International Airport were caught stealing from travellers’ luggage, CNN reported earlier this year.
Working in collaboration with the Miami-Dade Police Department, hidden cameras were installed at the airport as part of an ongoing investigation into luggage theft by airport workers. The footage from a camera set in the belly of a plane last year showed a baggage handler sifting through luggage and stealing several items, while another camera showed a different worker looking through several bags in a separate luggage room, while a security guard appeared to look the other way. Police in Miami have arrested 31 baggage handlers since 2012, and six so far this year, CNN reported.
Between 2010 and 2014, 30,621 claims of missing items, worth a total value of around $2.5 million, were reported to the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) in the US, a survey by CNN revealed. Most of the items had been in checked baggage while the rest were said to have gone missing at security checkpoints, the report said.
• What happens to lost luggage?
The highest number of theft claims were made from John F Kennedy International Airport, where 16 baggage handlers have been arrested since 2013, with several having stolen items from fliers travelling to or from Hawaii, Japan, Johannesburg, London, Bangkok, Dubai, Milan and several cities in the US, CNN reported.
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