360-Degree Camera Follows Bag From Airport Check-in—Here’s What It Sees
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0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Paranoid about what happens to your luggage after you drop it off at the airport as it disappears on the baggage belt into a seemingly dark abyss?
A revealing video shared by London ’s Gatwick Airport on its Instagram account unravels the mystery behind a bag’s trajectory as it speeds through various passageways before making its way onto the plane.
The video's caption reads, “What happens to your baggage after check-in? We rigged an @insta360 X4 to a suitcase to show you the whole journey from bag-drop to take-off.”
The footage offers “a behind-the-scenes look at the journey a bag takes through London Gatwick, from check-in through to being loaded onto an aircraft,” a spokesperson for the airport told Newsweek.
The video captures a surprisingly transfixing view of the suitcase’s exhilarating ride on the baggage belt, from winding turns to sudden drops, as it speeds through tunnel-like spaces before safely arriving inside the aircraft.
The clip begins at the British Airways check-in area in the airport’s south terminal. “From there, bags travel along a network of conveyor belts where they are scanned at multiple points to ensure accurate tracking and sorting,” the spokesperson said.
The bags later pass through a security screening area where they are checked using advanced imaging technology. Once they are cleared there, the luggage moves through the airport’s “automated sortation system,” where they're directed to the correct flight before being collected and loaded onto the aircraft by workers.
The video comes as there was reported to be over 40.7 million bags enplaned by a dozen major airlines in the United States on domestic flights in July, according to the latest Air Travel Consumer Report released this month by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). Of the total, over 221,000 bags were reported to have been mishandled.
The number of mishandled bags “represents the number of check bags that are lost, damaged, delayed, and pilfered, as reported by or on behalf of the passenger, that were in the airline’s custody for its reportable domestic nonstop scheduled passenger flights,” the DOT explains.
American Airlines accounted for the highest portion of mishandled bags (over 52,000 bags), followed by United (over 42,900), Delta (over 33,900), Southwest (over 32,500), and Skywest Airlines (over 14,500), according to the report.
Mishandled bags cost the aviation industry $6.3 billion annually, according to a report by SITA, a company providing IT and telecommunications services to the air transport industry.
Comparing that against the airline industry’s estimated total profit of $41 billion for 2025, the cost of the mishandled baggage alone is equivalent to around 15 percent of profit, the report found.
“It’s one of the largest operational drains on profitability in our industry, which is already defined by thin margins and currently burdened with sky-high fuel costs and persistent geopolitical uncertainty,” the report said.
But the true, potentially bigger, cost of mishandled luggage may be trust. “Passengers expect their bags to arrive on time, especially in a world where their parcels are delivered within hours, with instant updates on their phones. They want the same speedy service, with the same digital tools, when they fly,” the report added.
Last year saw nearly a billion passengers head to the skies across the U.S., and nearly 10 billion globally, according to a study by Unclaimed Baggage, the Alabama-based company that recovers, resells, and repurposes items from unclaimed airline luggage.
While over 99.9 percent of all checked bags “eventually find their way back,” with around 27 million travelers flying every day, “even the most sophisticated baggage systems can’t catch every connection,” the report said.
A number of these rare lost bags have ended up at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains at the store run by Unclaimed Baggage in Scottsboro, Alabama, which turns "lost items into treasured finds.”
The company has purchasing agreements for unclaimed items with all U.S. airlines and other travel and transportation companies.
The company explains that “it’s only after an extensive three-month search that an unclaimed bag is deemed truly orphaned—a fate realized by less than 0.03 percent of all checked luggage—that’s where we come in.”
It stocks around 7,000 unique lost items in its retail store every day, along with thousands more online, according to the company’s website.
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Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Sirena Bergman and Anthony Murray .
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