Heads up on potential luggage mishap at Newark, NJ, airport

Leave it to New Jersey for a mishap to pop up at the end of an otherwise smooth vacation. Smooth, of course, referring to the travel portion to and from our vacation location.

I say potential mishap because this hiccup may or may not happen to you. Sometimes it's luck of the draw, of which, we were one of the lucky winners this go around.

Before I dive into it, we were able to get this resolved in about 40 minutes, so it could've been much worse. Unfortunately for some travelers that day, it was. Just something to keep in mind and expect as a potential possibility.

With that said, our vacation started with a flight out of Newark Liberty International Airport. We were heading to Tennessee, and it was also the first flight of my almost 8-year-old twin sons, which was exciting.

It's also been many years since I was last on a flight. 10 years to be exact, so my wife and I weren't sure what to expect when arriving.

The check-in portion went fairly smoothly, as did the security check. Yes, if you can believe it, we didn't have any issues getting into the terminal.

Security was moving very quickly though, so it was a mad rush to get the kids to re-pack their personal backpacks for the flight. But as we learned on the flight back, that pace with security was also very similar at Nashville International Airport.

We had no issues at all retrieving our bags when we got to Tennessee. Once we got to the baggage claim area the bags were there ready for us to take.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the case after getting off our return flight in Newark. One of our luggage bags went missing.

But I knew that the missing bag was somewhere in the airport because I saw it get unloaded from the plane while we were still waiting to be let off. We had unique tie-dye tags on them that made it easy to identify which bags were ours.

We even had tracking numbers so we could follow exactly where our bags were going. And at the time, the bag status did update that all three of our bags were unloaded from the plane.

According to the screens in the airport, we were to head over to baggage claim C-1 to retrieve our bags. But when we got there, only two of our three bags made it.

While we were waiting, we noticed other travelers were still there. As it turned out they also had bags missing.

We all waited for a while hoping for more bags to come down the shoot. But unfortunately, they never did, and eventually that baggage claim area was turned off.

So here we are with only two of our three bags, with two children starting to get antsy from waiting for so long.

It was at this point I checked the tracking number again for the missing bag. And guess where the bag was scanned in to be picked up?

It was checked in at baggage claim C-1, which is exactly where we were. All three of our bags actually came up as being brought to that location, but quite clearly, one never made it.

There was a person that appeared to be part of security stationed at that particular spot, so I asked him if there was any other area this bag might've ended up.

But this airport worker couldn't have cared less only telling us he didn't know in a tone where he seemed bothered we even asked him. In other words, thanks for nothing, and sorry for disturbing you.

Then my wife saw a sign saying oversized luggage would be dropped off by baggage claim C-9. C-9, by the way, was nowhere near C-1 and our missing bag wasn't marked oversized, but it was worth a look.

So we get there, and guess what? No bag. By this point the kids are getting really impatient, but so are we.

I saw the other two passengers that were also missing bags from our flight in a decent-sized line for baggage issues, so I decided to get on that line myself. I mean, what else could I do?

My wife decided to walk around with the kids while also trying to keep them from getting any more antsy. She also kept our ride in the loop as to why we still weren't outside and ready to be picked up.

So while I'm on the line for baggage issues, one of our fellow passengers said this happened once to him before. He said the last time it took 6 hours before his bag was finally located.

That was not something I wanted to hear but feared might be the case. And to also note, this line for baggage issues didn't move once while I was waiting.

Fortunately for us, I didn't have to wait much longer. While my wife was walking around, she eventually spotted our missing bag.

It was near C-9, but not where we expected it to be. It was on the other end just sitting there.

And no, it wasn't marked oversized, so it never should've been there in the first place. Nevertheless, around 40 minutes later we finally had our missing bag.

I wished our other fellow travelers waiting in line all the luck in the world and hoped theirs would turn up soon like ours just did. It was so unfortunate one of them had this happen before and took 6 hours to finally resolve.

So for us, it was more of a hiccup, but still a very annoying mishap. One that perhaps might not have been so bad had it been just me going through this.

But whenever you have multiple people with you or young kids, every hiccup is amplified. And that's what made this a bigger hassle than it perhaps could've been.

A 40-minute hiccup is much better than a 6-hour hassle, but it's good to know that this kind of thing does happen despite those tracking numbers saying otherwise.

Yes, some people do have to jump through a lot more hoops before retrieving their luggage. But when an airport employee just says "I don't know" with a tone and can't even point you in the right direction, it just makes it worse than it needs to be.

So has anything like this happened to you? Whether it was just a hiccup or something much more complex, let us know in the comments. And if you did have children with you, did that make it harder to resolve?

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 Sunday morning host Mike Brant. Any opinions expressed are his own.