Meg lost or stolen 8-26

[Cave Diver]

Oh man that's funny. I don't think anybody doing RB's are impoverished. When you get into CCR you better have plenty of leisure dollars. Them things are not cheap in any shape, form or fashion.

Well no WONDER I dont have one then...

Got a dive in the works for the weekend of the 22nd. Call me if you're interested, you dont wanna miss this one!

 

[Mr.X]

Oh man that's funny. I don't think anybody doing RB's are impoverished. When you get into CCR you better have plenty of leisure dollars. Them things are not cheap in any shape, form or fashion.

Wait...doesn't the impoverishment for most come after you purchase the fancy, fully electronic rebreather? The Cis, MK, Boris were always considered purchases. However, if you have at least 12 million in the bank - no worries.

X


p.s. Sorry about the RB.

 

[almitywife]

Wait...doesn't the impoverishment for most come after you purchase the fancy, fully electronic rebreather? ........

i can confirm this......

 

[letterboy]

i can confirm this......

What are you talking about? You had dirt floors and an out house before you even thought about getting a rebreather

 

[Tom Winters]

I was being arcanely diplomatic for once about the coin involved in 'breather diving since 92.4% of the people on Scubaboard sleep in their cars on vacation and would choke to death on their Value Meals if they even had to price out this stuff as an exercise.
I didn't want them them to feel bad, but all you people forced me to unleash this staggering statistic to make a simple point.
One of the exponential growth areas for UPS/Fedex in the last few years has been resort luggage transfers. It seems to have coincided with the birth of the TSA.
Lots of the tech/'breather peeps coming to a Florida gateway ship it to Fill Express since the bottles have to be empty no matter who flies them, and there are still only x-amount of places anywhere on this planet who fill them.

 

[Mr.X]

Some odd reactions to a lost rebreather.

I've shipped my rebreather via the airlines several times. I have yet to lose one piece of kit. Yes, a fully closed circuit kit is a hefty chunk of change for anyone who works to support themselves, or provide for retirement. In the end, I think anyone entering the CCR arena has to consider at a minimum 10,000 to support the use of a CCR rig during the first year. This is not a small amount of change for most.

TUMI is a nice piece of luggage. So is Vuitton. I travel with Samsonite, or a no name piece of luggage. The implication is nice luggage, nice sutff inside. So far, I have not lost one item in over several decades of travel. I credit this to shi&&y looking luggage with ugly stickers on the outside. Does TSA screw up and check my luggage - Yes.

The takeaway message I get is that the original poster had the foresight to get insurance. That's thinking ahead.


X

 

[Jeff Toorish]

USAirways and Philadelphia --the black hole of air travel! It has one of the worst records of lost (and stolen) luggage in the industry.

I make it a point to never, ever, fly through Philly on USAir if I am checking baggage --a hard and fast rule. That means I often wind up paying more for another flight because living in Maine, so many USAirways flights connect in Philly.

Even so, it's just not worth it.

I just wrote an article for the new ADM E-zine about travel for technical divers and specifically mentioned Philly as an airport to avoid. (You can download the E-zine free at advanceddivermagazine.com. It spells out some tips to help minimize dive travel problems --there is information in there useful for non-techies, too.)

Of course, if Philly is your home airport that makes it much more difficult to avoid.

Jeff

 

[almitywife]

if my workplace had massive volumes of stock being removed without permission i know we would install cameras, security and contact the police

seems to have a completely different attitude at airports - the unions fight the installation of cameras and no-one seems to give 2 hoots about stolen property.

something seriously wrong there

 

[Jeff Toorish]

if my workplace had massive volumes of stock being removed without permission i know we would install cameras, security and contact the police

seems to have a completely different attitude at airports - the unions fight the installation of cameras and no-one seems to give 2 hoots about stolen property.

something seriously wrong there

It's not just that, though --USAirways essentially laid off a lot of employees at Philly and eventually replaced them with far less skilled and experienced workers, as I understand if from a friend who works for the Airlines.

In this case, the majority of the missing luggage is not really stolen, but it's either lost or mis-routed. The airlines are in a fierce battle to survive, to cut costs they reduce their workforce. They hire new people who are inexperienced. They cut the pay of existing workers --doesn't take long for that to catch up with any business. Add to that the complexity of routing thousands of pieces of baggage every day and you see the problem.

Are there some crooks, sure --but this is a dual problem of the airlines need to cut costs and passagers who, frankly, are not really willing to pay the true costs of air travel.

Eventually airlines and air travelers in the US are going to have to come to some stark realities.

Jeff

 

[caveseeker7]

Doesn't really matter if the luggage is lost or stolen. Either way, it's a security breach.
That's the part that upsets me so much. On one hand the security measures at airports are a major pita, for a 50 min flight from L.A. to Vegas you have to show up 2 hrs in advance, and spend most of it in line to have baggage opened and checked and checked again. Have to debate dive gear with mostly clueless people. Have to debate stupid incongruities between security measures and airline restrictions (i.e. tanks), and pay through your nose for it all. Then they hire riff-raffs to handle it all.

Unless it's cargo (a whole other subject that can get me going) there isn't supposed to be any unaccompanied luggage on airplanes. Hence, when your luggage goes on a plane you're not on there is a breach in security, and it's illegal. Plain and simple. Airlines should fined and baggage handlers charged, I believe that would eliminate a lot of lost luggage.

How, with all the supposed security, cameras, background checks some **** can just walk out of the airport with your rebreather is beyond me. But it's the same problem again: If you can get it out unseen, you can get it in unseen. We're talking about 40 or 50 lbs of metal, wires, hoses, batteries and electronics. All by people who load the planes, obviously unsupervised and unobserved. And some of whom are just as obviously having no problem deliberately breaching security and breaking laws for their purposes.