That’s gonna leave a mark. Photo: @karlie_huang33
The way baggage handlers manage to throttle surfboards, you’d think they underwent specialized training. Dings are to be expected. A glass crack here, a new pressure ding there. And if you’ve ever watched baggage handlers unload luggage from a commercial jet, you understand very quickly how these things happen so often to our surfboards.
But what was waiting inside this board bag was a special kind of destruction. No need for those inefficient craters that leave room for a trip to the ding-repair specialist and a chance to save your board. No, these baggage handlers just turned a longboard and a mid-length into two brand new Mini Simmons.
The board bag belonged to Chinese surfer Karlie Huang, who valued the boards at $3,600 before handing them over to Scoot Airlines (a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines). And as expected, the airline wants nothing to do with accountability, prompting Huang to put them on blast.
“Upon arrival, both boards were cleanly broken in half — total STRUCTURAL DESTRUCTION, IRREPARABLE. Scoot ground staff fully denied airline liability and refused compensation,” she wrote. According to Huang’s post, the airline’s defense for offering her no compensation is that their liability applies to “minor wear and tear during standard carriage,” and “Catastrophic structural breakage proves violent rough handling, outside normal baggage risk scope.” If I’m understanding that explanation correctly, this means an airline managed to avoid responsibility for breaking surfboards by arguing that the damage (it caused) was too severe.
That’s a new one.
From my view, airlines are the absolute worst when it comes to handling surfboards. And while many are quick to point out that baggage handlers are airport employees and not airline employees, that’s actually not entirely true. Major airlines often hire their own staff for the task at larger, busier airports. Smaller regional airports tend to employ contract workers who aren’t direct airline employees. And regardless of whose uniform they’re wearing, something about being a baggage handler seems to compel these people to hate surfboards.
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