from Hacker News

Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of luggage (2024)

by thunderbong on 2/24/26, 4:40 PM with 106 comments

• by jakub_g on 2/24/26, 5:37 PM

  > In early December, a 35-year-old passenger from Tanzania was impressed to see that all the handles of the suitcases on the conveyor belt in the baggage claim area were facing the passengers.

  > After the luggage is unloaded and collected in the cargo handling area upon arrival at the airport, ground support personnel manually align the handles of the bags and place them on the conveyor belt.

  That's a level of attention to detail that we should be striving for in everything we build.

• by Tor3 on 2/25/26, 7:45 AM

  One of my (two) suitcases was lost once when I flew to Japan. But I didn't have to find out by waiting forever at the conveyor belt until I realized that.

  Instead, when I left the airplane a person was there waiting for me, just outside the door, and explained to me that unfortunately one of my suitcases was missing. It was now in Shanghai instead of Japan. The person then walked with me to the immigration area, and then met up with me in the baggage hall afterwards, and took me to the right place to fill out the missing luggage papers, and explaining that if I could give the address of my place to stay in Kanji it would be easier. And the suitcase did arrive at my door the next day.

  And, of course, in the baggage area itself.. a person from the airline was standing in front of where the bags come out and preventing them from banging into the side when they came down the slide.

  Needless to say, but I've been travelling all over the world for decades and something like the above I've never seen anywhere else. Missed luggage uncountable number of times, many destroyed and damaged suitcases of course.. but that's elsewhere.

• by EuanReid on 2/24/26, 5:06 PM

  Headline's a bit misleading. They've never permanently lost a bag, and well done to them for that, but they've certainly lost them for periods of time. Just eventually found them.

• by adrian_b on 2/24/26, 5:46 PM

  When traveling to Japan, I did not have the slightest problem with lost baggage, either at airports, or with the Japanese services that allow you to send your baggage from one hotel to another, to be able to travel more lightly.

  However, at the airport, when flying back home I had an unexpected experience. At my final destination, when I retrieved my checked baggage in the airport, it no longer had the padlock that it had at check in, in Japan.

  I assume that this happened because at the airport, after check in, they have cut the padlock, to inspect the baggage. I also assume that the inspection was caused by a big kitchen knife that was in the baggage. The kitchen knife had been bought from a shop from Osaka, and it was well sealed inside the original package closed by the shop, but this would not be seen at an X-ray machine.

  There was nothing else in the baggage that could be suspicious. In any case, if they inspected the baggage to check the knife, it was done carefully, and the content of the baggage was in the exact same positions as after packing.

• by rectang on 2/24/26, 5:51 PM

  Applying cost-cutting analysis as an intellectual exercise...

  Airline ticket sales are so price driven that for much of the market, losing some percentage of bags won't change purchase decisions.

  I wonder if it's possible to identify which bags are from budget customers and for Kansai Airport to cut corners for those, accepting a certain loss percentage and saving money. It may not be:

  > In addition to monitoring bags with sensors, employees also patrol the area to check for dropped bags. According to the airport management company, this additional step significantly reduces the risk of lost baggage.

  I think you either patrol for all dropped bags or give up the patrols entirely, assuming that bags from first-class and budget passengers end up in the same area.

• by hknceykbx on 2/24/26, 9:33 PM

  Yes it all comes to the culture. But we need to take into account that Japanese culture for the workers themselves is absolutely horrible. Is all that suffering worth not losing a bunch of luggage or getting a train exactly the minute you expect? Not for me at least. I think it’s better to cope with imperfections like that than to work in a toxic environment where you can’t leave the office until your boss leaves. That same culture is the reason why we don’t hear about successful startups from Japan. God forbid there is a single bug in it. But what’s better - to have a software with a bug and not the cleanest code or not to have it at all? Hardware is another story of course. But my point is that there is both good and bad in any culture. Depends on how you look at it

• by kseniamorph on 2/24/26, 6:18 PM

  Visited Kansai recently and a few things stood out. Passport control was fully automated: just scanned and walked through. Security flagged something in my bag and resolved it really fast without slowing down the line. It's a small thing, but it's the kind of operational detail that makes a real difference. My travel experience has never been smoother. Makes me wonder why more airports don't get this right.

• by sparkie on 2/24/26, 5:32 PM

  My luggage was missing when I landed at KIX.

  But it wasn't the airport's fault - my luggage was still in Amsterdam.

  Arrived <24 hours later and they delivered it to my hotel in Osaka.

• by succo on 2/24/26, 5:31 PM

  They lost mine! but they found it and brought it to me 2 days later at my door on the other side of Japan. Mind blowing efficiency

• by dhosek on 2/24/26, 5:04 PM

  I feel like this is a challenge to me now. I will fly to and from your airport and you will lose my bag.

• by aapoalas on 2/24/26, 5:01 PM

  I have very fond memories of Kansai airport. First time I went to Japan I ... Uhh, I didn't have a visa despite going there for exchange.

  The Kansai airport immigration office uttered a lot of "oohs" and "eehs", but they came through and in less than 45 minutes my appeal for deportation was accepted and I was granted a 1 year student visa. Always makes me happy when I pass through there :)

• by lysace on 2/24/26, 5:35 PM

  I once flew with ANA to Tokyo/Haneda in First with a rewards-paid ticket for crazy cheap. When I got there and picked up my luggage there was a tag on it, asking me to go to some specific desk. I did. The luggage was a bit janky, but that happens.

  They very seriously apologized for breaking my bag. They asked me how much it had cost. I said "around $40, it was just something cheap". A minute later I was sort of ceremoniously handed an envelope with japanese yen notes worth that much.

• by ranger_danger on 2/25/26, 3:08 PM

  Japan has a long history of simply not reporting things (including serious crimes) because it makes their stats look bad.

  Go read some of the japan-related subreddits and they are all full of stories of people getting harassed/assaulted/etc. (or worse) and the police just absolutely refuse to do anything about it. Getting them to file a report for any reason is extremely difficult.

  And if someone does end up getting arrested for any reason, the entire judicial system is unfair and unnecessarily cruel and inhumane. They can hold you for up to 23 days with zero reason and zero outside contact. Many innocent people's lives have been completely ruined due to this for no good reason. They viciously interrogate people trying to demand confessions no matter how innocent you might seem, because again, it makes their conviction numbers look good.

  Don't get me wrong, I've been to Japan many times and I thoroughly enjoy all the good things about it, but just like every country, there are a number of quite bad things as well.

• by arvindkumarc on 2/24/26, 5:21 PM

  How is this stat even useful?

• by jopython on 2/24/26, 11:07 PM

  High Trust Society!

• by renecito on 2/24/26, 8:02 PM

  it't not lost until you stop looking for it :D