Kansai International Airport in Japan can’t be held responsible for the less superlative performance of airlines or other stops on a traveller’s journey, but it claims its handlers never lose a bag.In 30 years of operation, the airport serving the region around Osaka and Kyoto says it has never lost a suitcase, a set of golf clubs, a stroller or anything in fact — a feat its employees humbly shrug off as nothing special.”We just follow the work processes and rules and do what we have to do,” Tsuyoshi Habuta, supervisor at CKTS, one of the handling companies at Kansai, told AFP.There is no “special training” but Habuta and his teams handle more than 3,000 pieces of luggage every day with attention to detail.”We carefully handle suitcases to avoid shocks. Suitcase handles are aligned in a direction that is easy for customers to pick up,” Habuta said.”We hand fragile items, strollers, surfboards and skis directly to passengers,” he said.Luggage is on the carousel inside in the terminal building “within 15 minutes of the aircraft’s arrival to minimise stress of customers,” he added.One of Japan’s busiest international airports, Kansai was ranked the World’s Best Airport for Baggage Delivery by UK-based airport rating organisation SKYTRAX in April.”Everyone at the Kansai Airport is proud of this,” co-CEO of the airport Benoit Rulleau told AFP.Rulleau acknowledged that it is easier to achieve zero lost bags at an airport such as Kansai, which serves relatively few connecting passengers.But he said the achievement reflects the “incredible devotion” of the airport’s staff. The number of lost or delayed bags has sharply decreased globally in the past decade thanks to technology, said Nicole Hogg, baggage portfolio director at SITA, a Geneve-based IT services provider in the air transport industry.”If you think about the passenger volumes that we have, 6.9 bags being mishandled (per 1,000 passengers) is a very low figure,” Hogg told AFP.”A decade ago, we were in double figures,” she said, adding “the industry investing in technology is definitely paying off.”She explained that baggage is rarely mishandled when passengers have no connections.”The complexity really comes in the transfer process where passengers have short connection times and they’re trying to get from one flight to another,” she said.Kansai recently returned to its pre-pandemic level of 25 million international passengers a year.Ahead of the Osaka Expo 2025 it has gone through a renovation with a new security checkpoint that allows for an even smoother experience.Rulleau said the airport will be able to accommodate up to 40 million passengers a year — and probably none of them will lose their bag.

Indonesia has banned the sale of Google Pixel phones over the tech giant’s failure to meet investment regulations, its industry ministry said, days after blocking sales of Apple’s iPhone 16.Jakarta is seeking to boost investment from foreign tech companies with restrictive measures that require their phones to be 40 percent sourced from parts in Indonesia.”We declared that as long as those products don’t… meet the scheme we have required, they cannot be sold in Indonesia,” industry ministry spokesperson Febri Hendri Antoni Arif told a press briefing Thursday.”For Google Pixel, they have not obtained the TKDN certificate,” he added, using the acronym of the scheme that imposes the 40 percent rule.Google Indonesia did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.Southeast Asia’s biggest economy has a young, tech-savvy population with more than 100 million people under the age of 30 that tech companies are seeking to capitalise on.Around 22,000 Google Pixel phones had entered Indonesia this year, according to industry ministry data.Indonesia’s smartphone market shipment share in the second quarter of the year was dominated by China’s Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo, as well as South Korea’s Samsung, according to Counterpoint Research.The ministry said last week phones blocked from commercial sale could still be carried into Indonesia as long as they were not being traded.It said iPhone 16 phones had also not met the 40 percent local part requirement.Apple does not have an official store in Indonesia, but chief executive Tim Cook visited in April as the firm explores ways to invest in the country.