More than 50 Dartmouth students who flew from Boston to Lebanon last weekend had to wait up to four days to receive their baggage.
Northwest and US Air, the major airlines to offer flights between the two cities, anticipated the difficulties in fitting students' holiday baggage and ski equipment on the 19-seat planes that make the trip, said spokesmen from the airlines.
US Air planned to fly extra planes carrying only baggage or to use ground transportation to bring the bags to Lebanon, a company spokeswoman said.
But Monday's snowstorm prevented planes from leaving Boston's Logan Airport and made the road conditions unsafe for the vans.
Northwest Airlines had 200 bags that could not fit in the planes with the passengers, said Jim Lalos, a spokesman for Precision Airlines, a carrier for Northwest. Two trucks full of luggage arrived in Hanover on Sunday, but the next van was not able to get to Hanover until Thursday evening, Lalos said.
"This situation is very rare, but it does happen once or twice a year. Last year we had an extra aircraft in our fleet but this year we were unable to do that," Lalos said. "We were standing by with surface transportation, but the weather complicated matters."
Kate Protextor '97 did not know her luggage was not on her Northwest flight to Lebanon until she tried to pick it up at the baggage claim and found it was not there.
"I filled out a claim check and told a woman what my bags looked like. She told me that they would be in Sunday night or Monday morning," Protextor said. "Monday afternoon when I called, I found out that one of my bags was in Lebanon and one was still in Boston. But I couldn't have the bag in Lebanon because they were only going to make one trip to Hanover after all of the bags had come in."
The small planes are designed to accommodate two checked bags and one carry-on per passenger, which is the same policy as on the larger jets, Lalos said.
"Even though jet flights have the same rule, they can lift much more so they don't have to enforce the rules so strictly," Lalos said.
"On Tuesday when I called again a woman told me that a truck left Boston with 150 bags, but it went into a ditch because of the snow storm and had to be towed back to Boston," Protextor said.
It was not until Protextor's older brother called the airlines that they made the extra trip to deliver her one bag stuck in Lebanon.
"I called the airport and they wouldn't listen to me which is unfair because it was all their fault that this happened and I felt they should be doing whatever they could to help me," she said.
"My bags were never lost; they knew where they were the whole time. They just couldn't get them to me. That's just poor planning," Protextor said.
Greg Gilmer '96 also had luggage problems flying with Northwest. "I've been on the phone with them constantly, so they've definitely got an earful from me and they can expect a letter because I'm pretty upset about the situation," he said.
"They are delivering my bags to Webster Hall which is still a haul from where I live and now I've got to get a car to bring it back," he said.
Gilmer is planning to write a letter to the airline's Consumer Affairs to receive some form of compensation.
Deborah Ward, Customer Service Manager for US Air at Lebanon airport, said Northwest and Delta had more problems with delayed baggage than US Air.
"We were pretty happy we had as few baggage claims as we did," she said.
