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Mysterious journey of luggage revealedFrom CNN's Richard Quest  In 2005, 30 million pieces of luggage at airports around the world went missing. QUICKVOTEYOUR E-MAIL ALERTSLONDON, England (CNN) -- The odds are about 100 to one, but this is one lottery you do not want to win. Every year we check in 3.5 billion pieces of luggage, and at the other end, 12 passengers in every 1,000 get that sinking feeling at the carousel when their bag does not show up. Our bags start their journey at the check-in counter, from where they negotiate miles of little seen conveyor belts, crisscrossing terminals and runways, traveling at up to 30 miles an hour before reaching -- hopefully -- the hold of the aircraft that its owner is traveling on. It is one big roller coaster, and the tracks and buggies the bags travel on from check-in counter to plane are constantly in use and have a life span of just decade. The main reason bags go missing in transit is transfer mishandling,which applies to two thirds of missing bags. This is followed by loading failure, when your bag is left on the tarmac, and thirdly, loss is caused by ticketing errors. The truth is that even if you are at your destination but your bags are not, the odds are, they will turn up eventually. Of the 30 million bags lost every year, most are reunited with their owners within a couple of days. Only about 200,000 or so vanish without trace. Giles Price is a man who knows if your bag is going to be delayed before you do. He is in charge of baggage and connections for the British Airport Authority (BAA), which among others, runs London's Heathrow Airport. At Heathrow, scanners read bar coded tags on bags, which communicate with the computer system that drives the entire baggage system, identifying which baggage handlers the bags need to be sent to. Price said the process was complex but accurate. "We can actually read 97 percent of these tags. If we can't read one, if a bag is upside down and hiding the tag, then it will be sent to a special chute where we have manual intervention and physically read the bag to make sure it gets to the passenger," he told CNN. "The main control room is the brains of the system. The operators can see the status of bags all over the network, from which airlines checked them in to which flights they're aiming for, or missing. We can see how many bags are early how many bags are late and how many bags have missed their flight -- And I'm glad to say that's a minimum amount." Sorting out lost bag costs the airlines about $100 a bag and it is such a regular problem there's even a worldwide tracking system called World Tracer to help find it. The bad news is mishandling rates are on the rise. Apart from crossing your fingers, there are some things you can do to increase your chances of keeping your bag, according to Malcolm Tarling of the British Association of Insurers. "Firstly, think before you pack. Label your suitcase clearly inside and out make sure it's of good quality and the locks work properly and that you know what it looks like so you can keep an eye out for it," he told CNN. If after all this your bag still goes AWOL, the clock is ticking. Airlines will spend only 90 days trying to reunite luggage with its rightful owner. After that, you may as well wish it bon voyage. 
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