As T&L explained it, missing baggage is an extremely common occurrence. The problem occurs because they only land 6-7 flights a day and the majority of them are small propjets without a ton of cargo space. Bags marked priority - as Will's was because he's United Premier - will always make it but others are hit or miss.
As they further explained, enterprising Montenegrins make the problem worse by travelling to the US, buying vast amounts of goods, paying anywhere up to $6,000 in extra baggage fees to bring dozens of extra bags home, and then selling the goods when they get back. Clearly, if you're (a) going home and (b) selling what you've brought, you aren't going to be terribly concerned about when the bags get there. All of this leads to an incredible backlog of baggage headed for Podgo. The airlines will generally resort to flying extra flights in which the whole plane is full with baggage. Lexi said that there was one summer that every Sunday was just a constant stream of planes arriving full of baggage and it took several weeks to make a dent in the backlog.
While we were at dinner at the Hotel Podgorica after being in Kolašin for the day, Tim and Lexi saw a plane land which they knew was a special baggage plane given the hour but they didn't want to get our hopes up that our bag was on it. Shortly after, Tim got a call from the airport that they wanted to deliver the bag (apparently not a normal practice) to the apartment. Tim was able to convince them to deliver it to the hotel while we finished dinner.
We were very happy to have our bag back but... the "nice" folks at Tyrolean Airlines in Vienna went through our bag and pilfered a few things....
- one pair white Arnette sunglasses
- 2 cans shaving cream - 1 full size and 1 travel size
- 1 package nail files
- 1 Apple iPod wall charger and cable
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