We were starting to descend into Los Angeles when Delta sent me the following email. My favorite domestic airlines was sorry that our two suitcases did not arrive at our destination as intended.

Well, that obviously set us in to thinking what to do next. Good news is that we had six hours to spend before our trans Pacific flight. Enough time to go buy new clothes for this trip.

In any case, I could not do much at that point. Tried talking to an agent in chat box. Not much help.

Logical thinking was that there were two more flights from Atlanta to Los Angeles. So, hopefully they can send them in one of them. Question was if we would have enough time to take them and go to American Airlines for the check in to Australia.

Tried the link to check the status of the bags. It said they have arrived in carousel 23 ?!?

This meant, they have somehow pulled my luggage out in Atlanta for some reason and sent them out. But Atlanta does not have a carousel 23. Well, then the worst case must have happened. They mixed up destinations 🙁 Told Sharmila “The bags have gone somewhere else”.

Hmmm… this is not a good start, I mused to myself.

Curious about where they sent my bags, I checked the flight number they loaded it on to. Checked the flight status and it has gone all the way to…. wait… Los Angeles??? What the heck?

After a few more minutes of research, I figured out what had happened. There was an earlier flight that was leaving for Los Angeles and Delta decided to put our suitcases in that flight.

So, our suitcases would have been going around carousel belt 23 for two hours in Los Angeles like that ring of Saturn. In reality, they had taken them out since they were in an earlier flight and put them in a different area for us to collect.

Technically, Delta was right! My two suitcases did not arrive at our destination “as intended” !!

Phew!! That was a near disaster!!

All’s well that ends well!!