26 Million Checked Bags Go Missing Every Year

Once in a while we spot a stat that makes us stop what we do and ask "Really?" - we spotted this one today:

"Worldwide, the problem is far worse: Some 26 million pieces of checked luggage went astray on international flights in 2011: It’s as though an airport the size of Philadelphia International had misplaced one bag for every passenger during an entire year. And in 2010, an astonishing one million suitcases were never recovered at all, vanishing into a sort of baggage black hole because they were either stolen or lost their identifying tags somewhere along the way. “The lost bags don’t really get much attention,” says Lucian Ilie, a former baggage supervisor at JFK. “They just get kicked around.”"

Statistics Source: CN Traveler