Updated 5:30 am PDT Monday, July 12, 2004
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A strong odor led airline officials to what they believe is the 40 pounds of halibut a traveler reported missing from his checked bags two weeks ago.
Brenee Davis, a general manager for Continental Airlines in Anchorage, said the company's baggage handlers discovered "a ton of rotting fish" under a luggage conveyor belt recently at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.
There's no way to be certain, but she suspects it was the halibut that Ray Bolanos reported missing from a fish cooler he checked on a flight June 24 from Anchorage to Seattle. The fish smelled terrible and was thrown away immediately.
"We've gone through a few cans of Lysol," Davis said.
She said there is a new baggage belt system in the room, which has been in use for only a few weeks. Her theory is that Bolanos' cooler wasn't properly secured and came open on the conveyor belt.
Bolanos is not sure he buys that explanation.
When his fish cooler came off the luggage carousel in Seattle, he said he found a rope he had tied around the chest inside and his 40 individually wrapped one-pound chunks of halibut gone.
Reached on his cell phone Saturday in Kenmore, Wash., Bolanos told the Anchorage Daily News he had already heard from a Continental official about the rotten fish.
"She was trying to say that maybe the new conveyor chewed off my rope," Bolanos said. "It's not something that was chewed off. It was a clear cut."
He said he made arrangements to send the rope to the woman so she could investigate further.
He also passed along the name of another passenger who flew round trip to Anchorage from Seattle on Continental around the same time he did.
That woman, Marian Maxwell, said about 20 pounds of halibut, a box of .38-caliber bullets and some fishing tackle vanished from her checked bags.
Maxwell also believes her bags were pilfered. She said her two fish boxes came out last on the carousel, with their lids open and the nylon cords that had been tied around them sitting on top.
Officials at Continental's headquarters in Houston, Texas, could not be reached for comment over the weekend because their office was closed.
In Anchorage, Continental shares a baggage room with Frontier Flying Service, and Davis said usually five to 10 handlers are working in the area at a time.
Davis said when the smell first arose in the days after Bolanos' flight employees thought it was related to construction at the airport. Then it got worse.
"We started to get this huge smell like sewer," she said. "There was mass migration down there to figure out what the smell was."
Davis wasn't sure how many pieces of fish had been found.
"We're still finding it," she said. "We've got a long bag belt system."
Several airport officials confirmed that rotten fish had been found, though none were directly involved in the discovery.
I think Continental Airlines should be thinking about an ALL expense Paid fishing trip for Mr. Bolanos and Mrs. Maxwell.
Something sounds(smells) fishy(pun intended) in the baggage handling department.
Gun Runner
