If you wait long enough...

A Department of Transport document setting out strategy concepts for air travel for the next 30-odd years has come up with the idea of passengers' luggage being collected from their homes, or some local pick-up point, rather than having to be checked in at the airport,  Well, it must be getting on for fifteen years ago, my wife and I went on holiday to Gran Canaria and stayed at a hotel where precisely this system operated.  On the morning of the day of departure, you took your cases down to the hotel basement where staff from the airport were waiting to check it in and give you your boarding passes.  So when you got to the airport, you walked straight through to the departure lounge, and the next time you saw your luggage was when it came off the carousel at Birmingham.  And we thought at the time - why can't everybody do this?  Of course, Gran Canaria airport is a relatively small one.  I suppose the bigger the airport, the more complex the procedure becomes, and the greater the chance that your luggage will get lost or end up in Timbuktu or wherever.