★★★★★ Rated 4.5 out of 5
Before I begin, please know that this is tongue in cheek. I do still have a balanced sense of perspective on life. However, a travel event really irked me and had Agatha Christie looming large as I tried to solve the case of the missing stickers.
Yes, you can put stickers on your suitcase, and airlines do not ban them. The catch is that stickers can confuse the barcode scanners that route your bag, so keep them well away from the label area, and be prepared for some to disappear: ours did, between Cancun and Heathrow, and we never found out why. Luggage straps, a bright tag or a coloured cover do the same job more reliably.
We bought a set of luggage about two years ago from a specialist retailer. It was the first set of matching luggage we had ever owned, so we were quite excited about using it. We chose a classic navy blue and the cases looked great. However, on their first outing we quickly realised that everyone else thought so too, as most of the luggage on the baggage carousel was the same colour, and the same brand of case.
Not a problem, you say? We did not think so either, until after an overnight long haul flight, when we collected our navy blue luggage, collected our car and set off up the motorway for home (a 200-mile drive after very little sleep), only to receive a call from the Heathrow luggage department asking whether we had picked up the right luggage. “Yes, of course,” I replied confidently, only to be met with: “It’s just that we’ve got one here with your name on it, and a man who is missing a case which looks just like yours.” Humbled, we retraced our steps back to the airport to swap cases.
Never again did we want to risk such an embarrassing scenario, so we decided to make our luggage more identifiable.
Our first line of attack was a set of colourful luggage straps to go round the cases: bright orange, very fetching, I thought. It turns out that navy blue and orange go so well together that lots of other people had the same idea, so we were no further forward. I am not sure why, but I feel uncomfortable about having our surname embroidered on the straps, which could also have been an option.
Our second tactic was to put stickers on the cases from places we had visited. We had more success with this, and the number of stickers slowly increased after each trip. Finally our cases were instantly recognisable on the carousel.
You can probably sense a “but” coming, and you are right. After our last long haul flight, from Cancun to Heathrow, we noticed that some of the stickers on one of the cases were missing. Totally gone, peeled off.
I know some people think stickers are (a) childish or (b) a bit showy about where you have been, but they perform a very practical purpose, as outlined above.
Do not use ribbons on your cases, as they can get caught in the baggage machinery.
Using destination stickers seemed harmless. We had fun choosing one on each trip to personalise the luggage, and they were prompted for travel memories every time we got the cases out. We made sure not to buy anything that could be offensive, nothing political or commenting on social issues (each to their own). Sometimes the stickers were even a conversation starter at the carousel. So why peel them off?
After a quick search online, it seems missing stickers are quite common. There was a whole Reddit thread titled “Delta peeled stickers off my luggage”, in which the author had 25 stickers and all but two were removed, which seemed deliberate. A traveller on TripAdvisor had the opposite experience: one of their cases came off the carousel with four butterfly stickers on it that they had not put there. All very strange.
As silly as it sounds, it feels like an act of sabotage when it happens. It is not important in the grand scheme of life and world events, but it feels petty and personal, even though it clearly is not. Probably just baggage handlers having a bit of a laugh on a long shift.
Could there be other explanations?
Condensation: It may cause stickers to peel, though I am not sure that is a real thing.
Age: They lose their stickiness over time, although ours were all relatively new.
Accident: They get caught in the machinery, although in our case some survived and others vanished from the same line of stickers.
Baggage hygiene: Which deserves its own section.
Airlines check in your baggage using barcode labels, which the luggage processing machines read to route your bag to the right plane. Stickers can reportedly disrupt the scanners, meaning a bag is either not scanned or has to be scanned by hand, which increases the chance of error. This is the main reason travellers are advised not to plaster their luggage with stickers.
“Baggage hygiene” refers to the process of removing anything that might interfere with scanning. My guess is that it mostly means old baggage tags with barcodes on them, which some people like to collect, rather than decorative stickers. Either way, the practical rule is simple: keep stickers well away from the handle and the area where the label goes, and never leave old airline tags on.
If stickers are too unreliable for you, there are other options, and we now use a mixture:
Sturdy luggage tags: A bright, solid tag with your name and phone number, which also helps if the bag really is lost.
A coloured suitcase cover: A stretchy fabric cover in a colour nobody else has chosen. The case underneath stays pristine and the cover comes off in the hotel.
A single, bold sticker away from the label area: One big one on the top face is easier to spot than twenty small ones, and much less likely to be peeled.
A photo of the case on your phone: Not for spotting it, but for describing it at the lost luggage desk, which we have had to do more than once.
In closing
I will never know what happened to our suitcase stickers and whether they met an unpleasant end. I would like to think they got reattached to someone else's luggage and are still happily travelling the world.
The moral of the story is: use stickers if you want to, but be prepared for them to disappear. If you do, keep them away from the official luggage tags and barcodes so you do not mess up the scanning, and put a proper tag on the case as well.
We'll stick with it.
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