Manhandled baggage wears on travelers, no matter who’s to blame

Sunday, April 8, 2007 | 7:27 a.m.

Frequent flier and Henderson resident Marian Nebriaga is down three locks and one $65 bag this year.

She blames the Transportation Security Administration.

After all, she reasons, the bags were locked with TSA-approved combination locks, locks that only she and TSA inspectors should be able to open (The TSA has master keys for all such locks). She figures they're opening the bags, looking through them (and not leaving a note like they're supposed to), and either not putting the locks back on or putting them back on still open.

"They're either stealing them or they're incompetent or what," Nebriaga says.

And there was the time last June when she made it to San Francisco and an unsecured strap, one she remembered securing, came loose on the baggage carousel, caught in the machinery and jammed the works. Her fellow passengers leaped onto the carousel, tugged at it, pulled at it and ripped it down the side, all without freeing it. Eventually, it had to be cut free.

Her complaints echo those of travelers in Wichita, Kan., and Washington, D.C. - missing locks, broken zipper pulls, ripped straps. Nebriaga says she now travels with spare locks so she can relock her bag at her destination.

For its part, the TSA says the missing locks are probably not its fault. Bags spend most of their time with baggage handlers or the airlines. Inspectors examine fewer than 1 percent of the 70,000 to 80,000 bags that depart from McCarran International Airport each day.

Bags that TSA inspectors open get a note in them and TSA-approved locks are replaced, and if a lock has to be cut off, it's placed in the bag.

The more likely culprits, TSA spokes woman Jennifer Marty-Peppin says, are mechanical baggage sorters. Called "kickers," the sorters whack bags onto their appointed conveyor belts. The area around a kicker usually is littered with locks, luggage tags, straps and other bits of debris.

"It's amazing anything survives those things," Marty-Peppin says.

No one has told Nebriaga about this. She has written to the TSA and left complaints on its automated message line but has not heard back .

In response to questions from the Sun, Marty-Peppin said someone from the TSA would get in touch with Nebriaga.