When we check bags, we always have a bit of a fear that we’ll never see them again. And there’s bad news for San Franciscans coming back home through SFO: Our airport is the #8 most likely airport in the U.S. for getting your baggage stolen. That’s according to a study by AirAdvisor, a service that helps passengers claim compensation for flight disruptions from the airlines.
Although there are sometimes good reasons for why a bag goes astray, there can be a more ugly explanation: that someone saw it circling on the baggage carousel and snagged it. So maybe make sure your important stuff is in your carry-on or consider an Airtag so you can track your checked bag’s whereabouts.
The study analyzed the volume of passengers through 55 major U.S. airports, the Google and Yelp ratings for each, the lost luggage searches in the vicinity and—cue dramatic music—the average walking time from the gate to baggage claim. If you’re not hoofing it to be reunited with your bag, someone else may start a new relationship with it.
Having said all that, the #1 airport where luggage is most likely to be stolen is Dallas Fort Worth. It’s a pretty busy airport (but not the busiest—that's Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, which is #3 on this list after LAX). It saw 16,890 Google searches for lost luggage (although it’s not clear what timeframe those searches took place in… last year? the lifetime of the Internet?) and 51 disappointed Yelp reviews (out of 86.9 million passengers through DFW, that’s really not bad!). The key may be that it’s a long 43 minute walk on average from the gate to the carousel.
Compare that to San Francisco’s figures. San Francisco is #8 on the list with 51.3 million passengers each year. Although the walk to pick up your luggage is a brisk one—just 15 minutes average time—there were 18,770 Google searches for lost luggage. That actually represents the highest amount of searches for any of the airports in the top 10 of this list (other factors came into play, which is why San Francisco is at #8 and not #1). There were 22 poor Yelp reviews—the highest for this criteria was our neighbor to the south, LAX, with 76 complaining reviews.
Our advice? Don’t invest in a Louis Vuitton roller bag, and in fact maybe throw some duct tape around your off-brand luggage and slap on a few peeling Hello Kitty stickers to make it look less lucrative to thieves.
RECOMMENDED: While SFO is also not the best for delayed and canceled flights, it does have gorgeous airport art.