Why Europeans Don’t Check Luggage

If you fly European airlines, you may notice that most people don’t check luggage. I can tell you why.

I left the States Sunday for Lisbon–the first stop on a two-week tour. My luggage didn’t make it. After two days of calling Iberia’s baggage service and sitting on hold and being told to call back later (all in Portugese, of course), my suitcase finally showed up at my hotel at 4:00 yesterday morning.

I had the suitcase for a few hours until I made the mistake of checking it with British Airways for the trip to Helsinki. I arrived in Helsinki at midnight last night, but my luggage did not.

I forgot the #1 rule of flying in Europe: if you connect anywhere, you can kiss your luggage goodbye. Looking back at all the flights I’ve taken on European airlines in recent years, they lose my luggage about 70% of the time. Maybe they’re not trying hard enough; I see no reason they couldn’t achieve 80% if they really wanted to!

On the positive side, the European DevDays conferences are going well. The Lisbon conference drew 1,800 people, and we’re expecting 1,000+ in Helsinki today. I’ve been opening with a talk entitled “The Microsoft Web Story: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, and WPF/E.” Put these three technologies together and you have a cogent Microsoft Web strategy that provides cutting-edge tools for today as well as a glimpse at tomorrow. It’s a great time to be a Web developer!