Arriving in Sydney on a Qantas flight from Melbourne today, I waited patiently by the carousel, experiencing that familiar growing sensation of despair as the number of people waiting, and the number of bags emerging, both shrank to close to zero. Resigned to the fact that my suitcase was now in aviation limbo, I shunted myself over to Baggage Services.

I'd been shifted onto an earlier flight from my original booking after Qantas summarily decided to cancel the one I'd booked after I'd checked in, so the mix-up wasn't a total surprise. What was a total surprise was that, despite the fact that I could provide both flight numbers and my baggage ID tag, the Baggage Services computer had absolutely no way of finding out which flight my baggage might actually have gone on. "We can't look up that information," the counter operator helplessly informed me.

Basically, they were just planning on waiting, and hoping a bag matching the description of my luggage I'd supplied -- and with a tag matching the one printed for me from Qantas' own computer system -- would show up from Melbourne. When (if?) it did, a staffer would ring me, on a phone number they also had to enter into they computer system (which couldn't get that detail from my flight information either, even though it was part of the booking). For all the good the tagging of my luggage appears had done, it might as well have just had an Acid House-style smiley face attached.

There's been lots of talk recently about the potential benefits of RFID tagging as a solution to lost luggage. It strikes me that if the existing computer system can't handle a simple lookup of a reference number on a printed tag, adding RFID to the mix will be a classic lipstick-on-a-pig scenario.

Another notable conclusion: the Qantas staff themselves could not have been more helpful, despite working with a crippled IT system. This is something any potential buyers of the airline might want to bear in mind. Sacking people in favour of technology will not win you any friends.

The basic moral of the story is not to check any baggage, but by the time you've packed the laptop, the phone, the charger and the assorted doo-dads, that's a big challenge -- unless you abandon all hopes of changing your underwear on a regular basis.
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