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How To Secure Your Luggage

It is funny the subjects one can become interested in. I've found myself over the past couple of months more interested in luggage and while I've written other information on how to choose different types of luggage - today I'm going to talk about a part of luggage we don't like to think about - which is how to secure your luggage.

If you're like me and travel frequently - you will eventually end up in a situation where you lose your luggage. The silliest time I lost my luggage was when I was flying on a regional airline and as we pulled out from the gate we could see our luggage left on the tarmac. The airplane was too heavy to carry the luggage! You might also find out luggage is broken because of accident or damaged during airline transfer.

However, there are tips that you can use when choosing your luggage as well as when you are traveling with your luggage. These are probably better to actually help you on your trip than determining whether to pick a bag with stripes or not.

The most basic knowledge to have is to not to overpack your luggage in the first place. By only packing what your baggage can hold you will reduce the chances of the bags breaking. This is because the number one reason why bags break is because people overpack their luggage. There are smarter ways to travel such as not carrying toiletries that you can buy cheaply at your destination, proper packing technique and leveraging clothing that has extra pockets instead of over-stuffing your bag. You can further strengthen the bag and make it easier to find in the baggage pickup by using a strap around the bag.

The other cause of losing luggage is when they are actually stolen. In most cases this is because people packed valuables such as jewelry or cash in their checked luggage. While you can use locks to protect your luggage these are not a very strong protection - in particular not post 9/11 where the locks must be designed to be unlocked by the TSA. While we like to think that criminals don't have access to the master keys, I think that's being naive. Plus the locks don't prevent someone from using a knife or saw or drill to go through the luggage to rip it open. Instead of carrying valuable jewelry in the luggage - carry it with you in as plain of package as possible. Nobody suspects a plain brown envelope contains valuables - which is why gemstones are often transported that way between stores. So you can use the same trick with your own valuables.