There’s a particular kind of relief that comes from spotting your suitcase on the carousel after a long flight, especially once the bags ahead of yours have all been claimed and the pile keeps thinning.
For most travellers passing through Montreal-Trudeau Airport, that moment arrives without any trouble. But a ranking of the world’s busiest airports suggests it might be worth paying slightly closer attention than you’d think.
A recent study from flight compensation company AirAdvisor looked at 53 major airports around the globe and scored each one on how exposed your checked luggage is to going missing. The report, titled “The World’s Most Lawless Baggage Reclaims,” weighed passenger volume, Google ratings, negative Yelp reviews, the number of local searches for lost luggage, and how long it takes to walk from the gate to the carousel.
Montreal-Trudeau (YUL) landed in 34th place out of the 53 airports examined.
On a global scale that’s closer to the middle of the pack than the danger zone. But among the Canadian airports in the study, only Vancouver International (YVR) was flagged as riskier, coming in at 32nd. Montreal sat two spots behind it, ahead of Calgary in 35th, Edmonton in 38th and Ottawa in 44th.
In other words, of the Canadian airports AirAdvisor reviewed, YUL ranked as the second most likely place to have a bag go missing.
Why Montreal lands where it does
The ranking isn’t simply a tally of how often luggage disappears. Montreal-Trudeau actually logged fewer lost-luggage searches than Calgary, roughly 3,250 against Calgary’s 3,720, yet still came out ahead of it on the risk list. Two things pushed Montreal up. The airport moved more than 22 million passengers, second only to Vancouver among the Canadian airports studied, and its Google rating of 3.8 was the lowest of the group.
The walk from the gate to baggage claim clocked in at about 16 minutes, which matters more than it sounds.
The part most travellers never think about
The majority of baggage reclaim areas are not monitored and are open to the public, meaning nobody is checking a boarding pass or ID at the door. The whole thing more or less runs on the honour system. The longer the trek from your gate to the carousel, the more time there is for someone to walk off with a bag that isn’t theirs before its owner ever shows up.
That helps explain why the worst offenders worldwide were the heavyweights. London Heathrow took the top spot as the riskiest airport overall, followed by Paris Charles de Gaulle and Dubai International. Bigger, busier hubs come with more bags, more foot traffic and longer walks, and all of it works in a thief’s favour.
What it means next time you fly out of YUL
None of this means your suitcase is doomed the next time you head through Montreal-Trudeau. The odds still very much favour an uneventful pickup.
But with summer travel in full swing and the airport pushing through its busiest stretch of the year, a few small habits help.
Carry on whatever you reasonably can, keep anything valuable out of your checked bags entirely, and make your way to the carousel promptly rather than getting sidetracked along the way. And if a bag does go missing, file the report before you leave the terminal.