> I refuse to believe that in all those flights (at least a dozen, probably more) no one had ever missed the plane and left a bag aboard.

Hey! What about me? I missed my flight from Atlanta to New Hampshire, but my bag didn't. I wish they'd have checked to see if all ticketed passengers were accounted for.

> Either they were so good at retrieving the bags that it didn't cause a delay at all, or they just didn't care.

I favour the latter. Retreiving my bag was a NIGHTMARE, and they ended up involving three airlines and sending it to the *wrong UK airport*. That was after phoning around trying to get two airlines at three airports to agree on what was going on.

Matthew