<p>I’m also pulling for your D, CGM, and all others needing to travel right now. </p>
<p>H is to fly on Tuesday (from Germany) but so far things don’t look too bad - liquids in checked baggage, and arrive 3 hours ahead. No restrictions on carryon / computer at this point.</p>
<p>S, D, and I flew back to the US last week. I am SO glad we left when we did - can’t imagine what we would have done if they didn’t let S & D carry their instruments. Living without complete Internet connection at this point, so am not here too often, so I missed CGMs post earlier. Glad it seems to be going well, but I know you won’t be completely at ease until it’s over and she’s home.</p>
<p>My Ds friends, some are just able to leave London, they were all staying in an airport hotel, imagine that poor hotel, with all these waylayed kids and not as many chaperones!!!</p>
<p>When my mom first traveled after 9-11 she had her very expensive tweezers, and when you find the right tweezers to you guard them with her life… the HUGE marine that took them from my 60 yr old mom didn’t know who he was messing with…she tried, but had to surrendor the tweezer…boy was she ticked and we spent the next few days on vacation stopping in every drugstore looking to replace the tweezer</p>
<p>in the big scheme of life, it was no big deal, but it does give us a giggle when we think about it</p>
<p>well D is over Chicago!! at dublin they made her throw out her makeup at the gate, even though at the counter and at the security search they said it was okay</p>
<p>what was she gonna do, do a tammy faye on someone with purple eyeshadow and black eyeliner?</p>
<p>anyway, so far so good…its just immigration in chicago, getting all her luggage, rechecking it and switching terminals everything is on time…so just a day of waiting</p>
<p>she insists on a burrito as soom as she get in the car…</p>
<p>CGM, thanks for the update. She’s on her way and so the stress level for you hopefully went down.</p>
<p>My daughter is still in France though her job is ending and she is about to travel on her own for about 8 days, then comes home. She is going to Italy for fall semester and she just forwarded me a bunch of emails she got about the program in relation to these new alerts and so forth. I am not too concerned about the terrorism with the flights but it is all so random, even if the risk per person is so low. I thought about this when I got the forwarded emails today from the study abroad program she is going on this fall. While she is a student at Brown, she is going abroad through Syracuse University. Syracuse lost many of their theater students who were studying abroad in England when they were returning on the ill fated flight over Lockerbie. When I was at Syracuse in 2005 with my younger D who auditioned for their musical theater program, it was VERY chilling to go down the corridors where there are huge photos of each and every student on that flight lining the walls. I can see why Syracuse is sending out all these notices now to students going abroad with as much information about safety, etc.</p>
<p>I’m not too concerned about my child on the flights as much as thinking of her traveling on her own in Europe and from place to place (not by air mostly) but know she plans to call me as she reaches each destination that she has mapped out.</p>
<p>Enjoy your D’s return and I imagine her experiences this summer have been maturing ones.</p>
<p>D is in livingroom unpacking which is a very luck thing</p>
<p>SOMEHOW in Chicago, a whole lot of people’s luggage got left behind…Ds 4 baqs and noone could tell us where they were, just that they SHOULD be on the next flight, and they would deliver them…but since they really didn’t know where they were and had told us a few different stories</p>
<p>So, I took D home, and went back to airport, D was so upset, I thought if the bags did show up I could get them and not wait for delivery. After standing at airport for 4 hours, seeing unclaimed luggage sitting on the carasols for 30-45 minutes, I am glad I went back and waited…it would be so easy to park your car, go in, wait, and non chanlantly take an unclaimed bag and walk out…</p>
<p>Three flights in from Chicago later, waiting for bags to show, VOILA, all four bags…PHEW</p>
<p>So, we can all sleep well, knowing my Ds wardrobe, gifts, etc are safe and sound, as are my girls</p>
<p>In the grand scheme of things, this was pretty petty, but it was annoying</p>
<p>Actually, there’s an upside to the luggage delay. My daughter came through Chicago at age 16 on an international flight; due to delays in the first flight she had only about 45 minutes to make her connecting flight, and she had to retreive her bags, clear customs, recheck her bags and then make it to a different terminal, all on her own… and she is a very slightly built kid who had a couple of huge suitcases to manage. Amazingly enough she made the connection, but without a second to spare. </p>
<p>My d. has also had her share of luggage adventures - at age 12 she flew alone to Monterrey, Mexico to visit a good friend of mine, but her luggage went on to Mexico City without her. (And once our whole family did without luggage for a couple of days in Australia, when it turned out that our luggage had been sent to Oakland rather than Aukland and never made it on the second leg of our journey – but the happy ending there was that the airline gave us money to buy new clothes, and then we did get our luggage back the next day). </p>
<p>I’m sure that the mixup with you daughter’s luggage was probably related to heightened security, with passengers checking items that would ordinarily be carried on, and the attendant confusion. </p>
<p>In another thread someone suggested that it would make sense for airlines to carry people only, and for all the luggage to be checked and shipped separately via a service like FedEx, using planes carrying cargo only. I’ll bet the luggage would be more likely to reach its intended destination on time that way.</p>
<p>I can understand the coming in late, etc., its just that they can’t tell you where it is…those little barcodes you get with the #s that match the tags they put on your lugguge…basically useless for tracking, because they don’t track luggage at all…they can’t tell you if your lugguage made it omto the plane anywhere</p>
<p>it was kind of cute how my H said he would just replace all her clothes if it was never found…yes, a 17 yo girls wardrobe she has been accumulating for 4 years in HS…HAHAHAHAHHAAHA…he had no idea…the shoes, the purses, the sweaters, dresses, blazers…she was gone for 6 weeks…</p>
<p>anyway, all is well, just wish the airlines would have been more helpful and more honest…its not the employees fault, it was a bad system</p>
<p>I agree that they should have a better tracking system for luggage - it would be more secure, too. And I’d think very easy to implement simply by scanning in bar codes as luggage was loaded & off loaded.</p>