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Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of luggage (2024)

japannews.yomiuri.co.jp

61–70 of 113 posts

Re: Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of luggage (2024)

#61
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm now imagining a situation in which a customer at the point of successfully making an insurance claim to pay for the nice new clothes they've bought themselves is infuriated to receive an email informing them that Kansai airport has found their luggage and will endeavour to deliver it to a hotel anywhere within the world within two days...

The customer has presumably been paid. If they're smart there's nothing or very little in the suitcase that can't just be replaced. The airline/insurance has paid out and just wants the claim to go away. As a side-note, had a small kitchen fire with smoke damage last year and it was pretty obvious that, even though they were reasonably generous, the insurance adjuster, cleaning people, movers, etc. just wanted the wh…

Once the insurance adjuster is satisfied that you're not scamming them, they're often quite flexible and lenient.

I've only ever had luggage delayed once, they gave me a little bag of toiletries and a couple hundred bucks and a few days later delivered the luggage; never demanded the money back.

Re: Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of luggage (2024)

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The culture bit is the most important. You could add 100x the current headcount at all American airports and because the workers simply don't give a shit about doing good work, because they're treating it as a 9 to 5, where they have to go and suffer through a meaningless 8 hours, or worse, they treat it like their own personal access to other people's stuff to loot at will. The TSA is security theater, a vast majori…

> You could add 100x the current headcount at all American airports and because the workers simply don't give a shit about doing good work, because they're treating it as a 9 to 5, where they have to go and suffer through a meaningless 8 hours, or worse, they treat it like their own personal access to other people's stuff to loot at will. This places the blame solely on the workers. Their CEO earns a ludicrous multip…

Them being paid better wouldn't resolve the issue. Updating American culture such that individuals respected themselves, had a sense of shame, operated from a baseline of respect and gratitude for the opportunity to be working in the first place, these things fix the issue. Concurrently, the CEO respecting the workers, the institution, themselves, would result in wages commensurate to their value.

Expecting excellence, putting care and craft into your work, is something that is taught, it doesn't just magically happen.

Paying these same workers more would not noticeably improve outcomes, people would still lose luggage, steal shit, and then have even more money to spend.

The workers and the CEO are products of their culture, and without some sort of specific intervention against the outcomes wrought by those cultural influences, things would continue as before. Serious institutions indoctrinate their members and build a culture oriented around expectations of excellence and care and craft.

Such institutions can't compete in the marketplace we've set up, because it's cheaper to offer shitty service and low product quality, to keep employees expendable, low skill, low paid cogs, and to reward CEOs and management willing to screw over their fellow employees at every opportunity to ensure the number goes up.

That doesn't change unless the culture changes, which would change the regulatory environment, which would allow for things like excellent service and quality to be valued accordingly. America doesn't value excellence, it values "number go up."

Re: Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of luggage (2024)

#63
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need shame, really, societal shame that we inflict on those who have to take government benefits, perhaps. Flying an airline that's known to treat their employees like shit should cause the people at the cocktail to look at you strange. (We kind of have something like this in that shopping at Costco is considered "good" but lots of people won't admit they shop at Walmart - I'm sure they'll be bankrupt soon given h…

Not sure if this is sarcasm, but Walmart earnings continue to rise. Being embarrassed to shop at Walmart is largely a coastal elite bubble situation. For a more applicable example of shame, buying "cheap Chinese crap" is usually looked down on by all demographics or alignments.

That was the joke, everyone (at least in the coastal elite) says they don't shop at Walmart, but they exist everywhere.

Same with "cheap Chinese crap" - everyone decries it, but apparently everyone is also buying it.

Re: Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of luggage (2024)

#64
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh why even mention time constraints, we all know damn well it's financial. Every corp on the face of the earth is constantly cost-cutting everything to the bone to justify more bonuses and higher executive compensation, while making sure the service or products provided are just barely good enough where people don't stage outright riots. In the sixties, the C-suite earned 21 times what the line worker did. In 2024 i…

We should be spreading our cynicism over both management and customers. There is almost no level of service so terrible that people won't buy cheaper airline tickets. Let alone losing luggage, you could dial up the risk of death and people would still buy the cheaper tickets.

I mean, is that a consequence of people being innately, for it's own sake, cheap to a point of farce? Or is that a consequence of fifty years of stagnant wages?

I'm sure it's a healthy blend of both, but IMO, if you want to see this actually change, the first thing to even make it tenable as a possibility is the owning classes need to let some money flow down the hierarchy. Like I'm sure we'll always have our misers, our people who refuse to spend a penny more for anything, but I think the vast majority of the time what drives people to shitty retailers selling crap-quality products is that most people are fucking broke.

Re: Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of luggage (2024)

#65
post #16

> In early December, a 35-year-old passenger from Tanzania was impressed to see that all the handles of the suitcases on the conveyor belt in the baggage claim area were facing the passengers. > After the luggage is unloaded and collected in the cargo handling area upon arrival at the airport, ground support personnel manually align the handles of the bags and place them on the conveyor belt. That's a level of attent…

I find that the US is the most likely country to have this attention to detail.

Re: Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of luggage (2024)

#66
post #61
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The customer has presumably been paid. If they're smart there's nothing or very little in the suitcase that can't just be replaced. The airline/insurance has paid out and just wants the claim to go away. As a side-note, had a small kitchen fire with smoke damage last year and it was pretty obvious that, even though they were reasonably generous, the insurance adjuster, cleaning people, movers, etc. just wanted the wh…

Once the insurance adjuster is satisfied that you're not scamming them, they're often quite flexible and lenient. I've only ever had luggage delayed once, they gave me a little bag of toiletries and a couple hundred bucks and a few days later delivered the luggage; never demanded the money back.

I've had luggage delayed many times relative to the amount I actually check luggage.

There were a few insurance policy things that my adjuster pushed back on (no code upgrades) and there were a number of things that would have just been silly for me not to pay for when walls were being repaintedd and opened up. There was a fire inspector because of the size of the claim. But it was pretty reasonable overall--although of people wouldn't have had the available cash to do the whole job as it really needed o be done. And, given that a couple of contractors, saved my butt in the middle of the winter, I wasn't going to push back too hard.

Re: Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of luggage (2024)

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The culture bit is the most important. You could add 100x the current headcount at all American airports and because the workers simply don't give a shit about doing good work, because they're treating it as a 9 to 5, where they have to go and suffer through a meaningless 8 hours, or worse, they treat it like their own personal access to other people's stuff to loot at will. The TSA is security theater, a vast majori…

> You could add 100x the current headcount at all American airports and because the workers simply don't give a shit about doing good work, because they're treating it as a 9 to 5, where they have to go and suffer through a meaningless 8 hours, or worse, they treat it like their own personal access to other people's stuff to loot at will. This places the blame solely on the workers. Their CEO earns a ludicrous multip…

They are paid less.... you know there are rich people in japan?

Re: Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of luggage (2024)

#68
post #60
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it also highlights something: better things are possible. Zero lost suitcases doesn't require magic to achieve. It just requires enough workers or enough time to make sure each worker is able to do their job successfully. Unfortunately financial and time constraints mean that very often there aren't enough workers or enough time, and some passengers suffer.

Also you need to keep organized crime out of airports. Some percentage of lost luggage is actually stolen luggage. Misrouting is also another large percentage. In the US unclaimed lost luggage ends up in some gigantic warehouse in Alabama.

What percentage? I imagine it is insanely low. The risk to reward ratio of making money off a random bag at the airpot has got to be as low, if not lower than, the actual percentage stolen. One thing I've never been worried about it is organized crime, or anyone really, stealing my bag at an airport.

Re: Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of luggage (2024)

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> financial and time constraints What a passive way to say executives kept a larger share of profits for themselves, forcing workers to be stressed and do a sub-optimal job. Its like the news reports that say "an officers weapon was discharged and someone died at the scene", rather than "a cop shot and killed a guy".

> What a passive way to say executives kept a larger share of profits for themselves, forcing workers to be stressed and do a sub-optimal job. This is a very limited view of why things don't work. The main issue in my experience is whether the company values the outcome and ensures focus on optimizing for it. That can include everything from adequate staffing to comp to training to management focus. (A lot of the las…

US healthcare is a leader in administration fees (e.g. paying health system executives) compared to other countries around the world. High US healthcare cost isn't because of increased usage, but because of the higher admin fees and higher prescription drug prices. Prices are fixed high because law prevents the government from negotiating prices (o.b.o. Medicare/aid), and those provisions were inserted on behalf of pharmaceutical companies so their executives could make more money.

Paying individual workers more may have some benefits, but I think the key issue is usually overworking and burnout because the incremental cost of adding a whole new employee is way higher than just pressuring workers to do more work in the same time.

Re: Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of luggage (2024)

#70
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should be spreading our cynicism over both management and customers. There is almost no level of service so terrible that people won't buy cheaper airline tickets. Let alone losing luggage, you could dial up the risk of death and people would still buy the cheaper tickets.

I mean, is that a consequence of people being innately, for it's own sake, cheap to a point of farce? Or is that a consequence of fifty years of stagnant wages? I'm sure it's a healthy blend of both, but IMO, if you want to see this actually change, the first thing to even make it tenable as a possibility is the owning classes need to let some money flow down the hierarchy. Like I'm sure we'll always have our misers,…

> I mean, is that a consequence of people being innately, for it's own sake, cheap to a point of farce?

Yes.

The price-driven market segment will never disappear and is an emergent property of human nature and the dynamics of a marketplace where prices are instantly comparable.

Plane tickets are way more affordable for nearly everyone than they used to be, but price competition is more savage than ever. The marketplace has spoken.

While I agree that concentration of wealth at the top is a major problem, I don't think that shaking loose that wealth will change the price dynamics of the airline industry in the slightest.

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