on airport luggage theft

The great surprise about airport luggage theft is how rare it is. I’m not sure why.

Entering London 4 days ago, I had one of those especially lengthy delays at the passport check area. By the time I got to the luggage area, my bags had long since been offloaded, and were waiting right there for me. Anyone could have stolen them with nobody looking at them twice. Even on the outside chance they were checked, they could always say: “oh, I’m so sorry, my bags look just like these. I should have checked more closely.”

But all throughout the wait in the passport line, my thought was never “I hope no one steals my luggage.” If I ever worried for a second, it was more along the lines of “I hope the airline didn’t lose my bags, because I have no time to fill out a claims form right now.”

There is a strange sense of trust in airport luggage areas that exists in few other spheres of contemporary life. How could we export that sense of trust? Or is it untranslatable into other domains for some reason?