Securoseal

Theft is in the air 

Misty Harris,  Canwest News Service  Published: Saturday, December 27, 2008

Chris Schwarz, Canwest News Service

When Deborah Kurach arrived home recently from Miami via Toronto, she discovered the jewellery pillow that once held her two Anne Klein watches was empty.

The Sherwood Park, Alta., woman says the experience will forever change the way she travels by air.

"I plan to carry on my luggage from now on, which is what I see a lot of people doing," says Kurach. "It actually slows everything down and is making security bad again, but they're causing their own problems."

According to the Conference Board of Canada, two in five Canadians will travel this holiday season.

RBC Insurance reports a "gradual increase" in Canadian travellers' claims in the past seven years. The agency partially attributes the trend to the U. S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) cutting locks on luggage post-9/11, leading passengers to leave suitcases unsecured and more vulnerable to thieves.

"While security at airports appears to have improved significantly, theft rings will continue to plague travellers and checked luggage," says Stan Seggie, president and CEO of RBC's travel division.

In 2007, two baggage handlers at Toronto's Pearson International Airport were charged in a case that recovered about $12,000 worth of pilfered passenger goods. Three years earlier, a separate operation was uncovered at Pearson; police seized $4.25-million in cash, goods and property from an insider theft ring.

This fall, police broke up one of the largest luggage-theft operations ever seen at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport; detectives estimating the value of goods stolen by the accused baggage handlers to be in the millions.

And just last month, Los Angeles International Airport saw the biggest bust of its kind when two baggage handlers were revealed to have been stealing from passengers' suitcases for as long as a year. Hundreds of items such as designer handbags, electronics and jewellery were recovered from the suspects' homes.

Jack Schoenmakers believes he may have been a victim of one of these criminal operations. The Kitchener, Ont., man's digital camera was removed from his checked suitcase in September, 2006, when he was coming home from his Hawaiian honeymoon via LAX and Pearson.

"The loss of the camera was significant," says Schoenmakers, who was refused compensation by the airline. "But at the end of the day, it was the pictures -- which we would have cherished-- that mattered most."

John Infanger, editorial director of Airport Business magazine, says "this type of thing has been going on for years," but he says that the problem isn't as pervasive as recent headlines might suggest.

In the U. S., the airport with the most TSA claims filed for items missing from passenger luggage is LAX, logging in at more than $300-million over roughly 3,700 claims since 2001. But the claimants account for just a fraction of the 61.9 million travellers who made their way through Los Angeles airport last year alone. Because there are no similar industry-wide statistics for Canada, the problem here is harder to measure.

Connie Mushens and her husband were the victims of theft last month when flying south for a cruise via Edmonton, Chicago, Atlanta and Miami. The Mushens's luggage was lost, then recovered three days later with between $1,000 and $1,500 worth of jewellery missing.

The couple has filed separate claims for the loss of their baggage and the stolen jewellery but hold little hope of being compensated for the latter.

According to the airlines, industry regulations preclude any liability on their part for the "loss, damage or delay" to a laundry list of items including money, jewellery, business documents, computers, video equipment, cellphones, cameras, electronics, musical instruments, sporting goods and garment bags.

"The responses we've gotten so far have been that this is the risk of travelling," says Mushens, who like Kurach, plans to carry on as much as she can in future.

"It's a lesson learned -- and not a good one."

Passengers can also make a claim through the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), but only if their property went missing during security screening -- an occurrence the government agency says there's "virtually no way" of happening with checked luggage.

In the case of the recent LAX thefts, Los Angeles police Lieut. Peter Whittingham says the suspects were using wire cutters to access passenger bags just prior to loading them into the bottom of the aircraft.

The risk of getting caught, however, is high.

"Where do you find a place to go through that luggage discreetly?" asks Infanger. "It's a pretty open, pretty observed environment -- particularly by federal officials."

Some homeowner's policies will compensate travellers for items that go missing on a trip. Travel insurance compensation policies also vary.

In order for TD First Class Travel Visa Infinite cardholders to successfully make a claim under their coverage, the entire bag must have been "permanently misdirected" by the carrier, while TD's "purchase security" benefits only cover the theft of items charged to the card in the last 90 days. RBC's travel insurance has no deductible and will cover up to $1,000 for lost or stolen jewellery to a maximum of $500 per item or set of items.