Passengers Are Making a Dangerous Mistake at the Baggage Carousel
What looks like a harmless travel hack may be quietly sabotaging thousands of trips every single day.
That brightly colored ribbon tied to your suitcase handle—the one meant to help you spot your bag faster—could be the very reason it never makes it onto the plane. According to a veteran baggage handler, this small, well-intentioned habit is triggering scanner errors, security delays, and missed connections far more often than travelers realize.
Behind the restricted doors of the airport, far from the check-in counters and boarding gates, baggage handler John sees the same frustration play out on repeat. He watches conveyor belts spin, flights depart on time, and passengers arrive—only to stand frozen at empty carousels, convinced their suitcase has simply “gone missing.” In reality, John says, many of those bags were flagged long before takeoff.
The culprit is often dangling items: ribbons, loose straps, or old destination tags left behind from previous trips. Automated baggage systems rely on clean outlines and unobstructed scans. When something flaps, twists, or snags, scanners can misread the bag or fail to read it at all. Once that happens, the suitcase is diverted into manual inspection—a slow, human-handled process that doesn’t care if your flight is already in the air.
Old airline stickers are just as problematic. A faded barcode from a past vacation can confuse routing systems, sending a bag down the wrong conveyor or into what John calls “baggage limbo,” where it waits for human intervention while its owner waits at the wrong airport.
And then there’s marzipan.
The sweet almond treat, popular in many European destinations, has a density that closely resembles certain explosives on X-ray machines. When it shows up in checked luggage, it can instantly halt screening lines. In some cases, John says, passengers have been pulled off planes in full view of other travelers so security teams can resolve the alert. The result is embarrassment, delays, and sometimes missed flights—over a dessert that seemed harmless at the time.
The advice from those who work behind the scenes is surprisingly simple.
Remove everything from your suitcase that doesn’t belong there: ribbons, dangling tags, loose straps, and old stickers. Instead of relying on add-ons, choose luggage that stands out on its own—bold colors, unique patterns, or even flat paint or stickers that lie flush against the surface. When placing your bag on the conveyor belt, turn the wheels upward to reduce damage and help scanners get a clean read. And if you’re carrying dense foods like marzipan, keep them in your carry-on if permitted—or better yet, leave them for another trip.
Most travel disasters don’t begin with bad luck. They begin with small, overlooked habits that seem clever but quietly work against the systems moving millions of bags every day. Sometimes the best way to protect your luggage isn’t adding more to it—but taking things away and listening to the people who see these mistakes unfold, shift after shift, flight after flight.