PICK a moderately priced outsider in the 3.30 at Newmarket and its odds are similar to the chances of British Airways losing your baggage.
They must work very hard at it, because the system seems straightforward. Before you get on a plane your bag is tagged with the flight number. All the handlers have to do is put it on the right plane. How difficult can that be?
I have always managed to get on the right plane, despite a chaotic airport offering me umpteen chances to make a mistake. Surely, their options are more limited.
My wife, a woman, steers me through the confusion and this is where baggage handling goes wrong. Mostly, handlers are men and, as we all know, men never put anything away properly.
If they do, then they forget where, so it’s just the same. Hence a trunk bound for Benidorm might easily take flight for Tenerife.

Women on the other hand are natural put-awayers.
If my wife was in charge of the baggage at Heathrow not only would the all the right cases get put on all the right planes, but they would be stacked neatly and possibly in colour sequence.
‘Right, we’ll have all the brown ones in that corner, black over there and the pretty pink one at the front. It looks so much nicer,’ she’d say and have it all done in a minute and a half.
If there was still time she’d have them dusted, too.
As travellers we are at our most fretful when waiting at the carousel.
We stare at the big plastic flap at the far end as if waiting for a date to turn up.
Why is it no-one ever wants the first few cases to appear? They go round and round unclaimed. I think they’re empty and their purpose is to let you know something positive is happening behind that big flap.
There is a yellow line which you are asked to stand behind, but you can’t. No-one does. You have to stand as close to carousel as possible, don’t you? Waiting, waiting and then swooping like the truant officer on Dennis the Menace when your case shows up.
‘Gotcha, you little blighter.’
Oh, the relief. Only then can your holiday begin.
But imagine how reassuring if, above every carousel, there was the sign: Your plane was packed by a woman.

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