This has happened to me many times. The correct procedure is to report that missing luggage at the baggage service counter for your particular airlin in the baggage claim area. Every airline has 1 or 2 representatives that speak Spanish and the language of the country from which the flight originated, in the baggage claim area during then end of the baggage claim process.

If your bag is missing, the service people will take some information from you and they may or may not have information about where your bag is and when to expect it to arrive. At the least, they will tell you when you should check back and where you should go.

You will be given a piece of paper regarding that claim and you will also still have your baggage claim checks. Those pieces of paper are are all you need when you come back later to get your luggage. Believe me, the door guards see this every day.

If you don't present the papers, they you are literally trying to "talk" your way in, something much harder in my opinion. Often, you should first check the ticket counter for the airline, as they often process missing and rerouted baggage in an office behind the ticket counters and the even sometimes hold bags back there. But the majority are locked in mesh wire cabinets in the baggage claim area.

At times, luggage is even forwarded on another carrier or sent as freight, as has happened to me at least twice when flying Continental and until last December when they switched to a different aircraft type, was their standard procedure for flights that could not hold all the passenger luggage.

That involves a trip to a special section of the airport and a long process, but all you need are those claim papers. Note that freight customs is not open on Sunday so if this happens to you on a Sunday, you need to get someone involved right away else your stuff will get "lockered" until Monday.

Once in my case, we had an airline agent grab the bags off the freight belt and de the bags transferred over to the passenger terminal for clearance through passenger customs so we could get our bags before departure the next morning.

Jim Hinsch JimHinsch@CSI.COM