Lost Baggage Boy

I went over to the Travel Office at the CDC today and
helped out a bit. Since I'm only going to be in town
for a few days and it would take much longer for me to
learn the software they use, I was put on Lost Baggage
Duty. My friend Andrea, who is doing the same job I did
last summer as Air Services Rep told me that 1100 bags have
been lost this season between LAX (Los Angeles) and AKL
(Auckland) alone. These aren't just random bags from all
flights. These are just the bags of people headed to the
Ice! They're averaging 7 bags lost per every C-17 flight
headed south. These aren't our folks losing the bags.
It's the airlines losing the bags. Primarily Qantas and
Air New Zealand. So my duty for a couple hours was to take
a list of 20 or so people (Mostly NAVCHAPs and Grantees)
and find out the status of each of the lost bags. The
people at the Lost Baggage counter at the Christchurch
Airport were very friendly and efficient (not a good sign
in this case...apparently they are so good because so many
bags get lost. So I tallied my list and about 2/3 were
coming in on flights later that day...from Sydney!
Apparently because of late bookings and crowded flights,
most Ice-Bound folks are now coming LAX-SYD-CHC. Ugh.
Nothing like adding two more hours to your already long
flight. So apparently I was good at what I did (How tough
could it really be?) so I'm going back on Friday to repeat
the process. Plus the head of the Travel Department wants
to pick my brain regarding the Redeployment Process that
will happen at Winfly this year. Going from Lost Baggage
Boy to Brain-Pickee...could be interesting.