Write Personal Information on the Luggage Shell to Avoid Loss and Help Airlines Identify and Locate It

Recently, the national carrier “China Airlines” (China Airlines) notified travel agencies that, given the shortage of manpower at European and American airports causing a large amount of luggage to be stranded, the airline recommends that passengers affix identification tags to the outside of their luggage, or use name tags with contact phone numbers and addresses written in English.

Once luggage is accidentally lost during transportation or transfer, the airline can more conveniently and quickly help us retrieve it.

Writing Personal Information on the Luggage Shell

How to record the necessary personal information on tags and name tags is actually an art in itself.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, when global air travel was bustling, the author usually recommended not marking personal information (abbreviated as personal data) on luggage 🧳, so that people cannot easily link you as a person with your luggage, or even look up more of your background through other means.

People with ill intentions may well target you, for example by secretly stuffing prohibited items, intending to make you smuggle them through customs inspection. Once your luggage is seized, you will be sent straight to a dark prison, and only an indefinitely long period of days awaits you. Even the amount of information displayed can be used to judge whether to kidnap you in order to extort ransom from your family.

If it is only to easily find checked luggage on the baggage carousel upon arriving at the destination airport, the author mostly only recommends tying on a colored strap or MOUNX Mountain Patrol Outdoor shaped stickers for easy identification.

More advanced independent travelers usually carry a super-large black garbage bag and wrap the entire luggage and (unbreakable) souvenirs at the airport, so the chance of a luggage collision is almost never encountered — after all, it’s just too ugly, and for those pursuing expensive designer luggage, it’s simply a butcher’s knife.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced airport manpower, forcing airlines to recommend that passengers add personal information tags to their luggage to facilitate locating lost luggage, the author thinks it’s still fine to add them, but what to add is very important.

Minimal Personal Information Is the Only Principle

If you only intend to disclose a single piece of information, the mobile phone number you carry with you is the best choice. As long as there is a place that can receive base station signals, airport staff can find you.

If you carry a satellite phone, you can even show off to the cute ground staff that you are on the summit of Mount Everest (Mizuc did something similar on the main peak of Yushan).

Next is your own name, so that airport staff can address you, or even find out who you are directly from the passenger list. Remember that in addition to Chinese characters, this information must include the same English spelling as registered on your passport.

Personal Information Tag Illustration

Any information beyond this is excessive data. For example, a common controversial piece of information is the address.

Perhaps what is written is the real home address, but when we travel outside, we absolutely do not want the luggage to be sent directly home. Instead, it lets people with ill intentions judge through satellite maps whether you look like a fat sheep.

Perhaps what is written is the address of the accommodation hotel, but we cannot guarantee at all that when the luggage is sent over, it will still be waiting at the same hotel. Instead, it lets people with ill intentions get there first and wait for you at the hotel where you are staying.

So Mizuc has never understood why some people want to expose their address on the outside of their luggage for others to see, making themselves as helpless as a lamb stripped of its wool and thrown into the great northern wilderness when traveling abroad.

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