There’s an old saying that there’s only two kinds of luggage, carry on and lost. The truth is it’s much more complicated than that.

A baggage handler might steal a birthday present out of your luggage.

Last year an American Airlines baggage handler fell asleep in the cargo hold and flew to Chicago. At British Airways a memo had to go out asking staff not to urinate in the cargo holds of their planes.

If your bag makes it to its destination there may not be anyone to meet it as it comes down the chute. Or it might reach baggage claim only to find a geyser of water spraying up from the floor next to the carousel.

Alaska Airlines offers a 20 minute bag guarantee but you only get miles if your bag is late, not if it’s destroyed.

One enterprising Alaska baggage handler decided to exploit this loophole today — just tossing bags out the side of an aircraft onto the tarmac in San Diego.

We were walking to our gate at San Diego and Ethan dead stopped at the window and just stared. We caught a minute of it.

Fyi don't check anything fragile in your bags with @AlaskaAir ! pic.twitter.com/PEInahdIWj

— Joe Bishop-Henchman 💸🚆📖⚖️ (@jbhenchman) July 4, 2019

It’s hardly the first time we’ve seen this. For instance in the fall a Southwest baggage handler played toss the luggage — including with live fish — and his fist bump is the most amazing part. And Alaska’s baggage handlers have been caught playing ‘toss the luggage’. In fact I had my own checked bag purposely re-routed to Reno once when their employees were frustrated with contract negotiations.

Here, by the way, is how checked baggage should be handled — and how they do it in Japan.