You Can Now Personalize Your Suitcase By Covering It With A Gigantic Photo of Your Face

If you have ever had your luggage lost while travelling you know just what a nightmare, trying to get it back can be. Ring the airport, again and again, to see if it's turned up, then you either need to wait for a courier or go back and collect it yourself. But London based online retailer has got a solution that will ensure that it's clear which bag belongs to you. Head Case literally puts your head on your luggage. Talk about photo ID.

Add any image to your existing case

The concept is a stretchable case cover that you slip on over the top of your existing luggage. Travellers simply upload the image they want onto the site and the image will be printed on double-sized polyester and spandex blend material sleeve. You can choose any image you like, whether it's your own face, your pet, a lover or even Donald Trump. Just choose an image you don’t mind thousands of people in an airport seeing. Head Case works with luggage with pull-up hands, but if you rely on your bag's side handles to move then maybe steer away from this gimmick. Head Case is available on the online store Firebox and ranges in price from $26.00 to $39.00.

Luggage might still get lost

While having your face on your bag won’t really stop it from getting lost, it will help get your bag off the conveyor faster. It was reported in 2014 that airlines mishandled 21.8 million bags. That's’ about 7 bags per thousand passengers. While that might seem high, almost 85 percent of these are returned to their owners by courier within 48 hours. 47 percent of these missing bags go walkabout due to "transfer mishandling", i.e. when passengers make connecting flights. According to a report from SITA, the world's leading specialist in air transport communications and information technology, only 7 percent are lost or stolen never to be recovered. If you do end up the last person at the empty carousel, your airline must compensate you for the time while you wait for your luggage to be reunited with you. This may be store credit or a traveller's cheque. In some cases, airlines have told passengers that their insurance must pay out the compensation, which depending on your terms of carriage may or may not be true.

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Tracer system for bag retrieval is working 24 hours a day

A spokesperson for Virgin Atlantic explains: "When a customer identifies their bag as missing, a report is made into a system which searches bags found with similar criteria. Bags found at an airport without a customer attached or missing a tag are also logged into this system with any details that can be established.” This tracer system operates twenty-four hours a day searching for matches between the reported missing bags and found bag reports. Once a match is made, airport staff facilitate with airlines to get the bag back to its owner as quickly as possible.