Baggage Handling: A Mathematical Model

Spending an hour in the AUH airport yesterday trying to find my lost baggage, which is hopefully somewhere between Atlanta and Kuwait, got me thinking. Imagine every airport in the world as a node in a network, and bags as packets of information. In order to function properly this system needs to conform to a strict schedule to pass information between nodes (a bag can't make it to it's destination without catching its flight. Also information transfer in this system will freeze if each packet doesn't stay at a node for a specified delay period (in this case about an hour). Increase in the delay period at a node decreases the delay period at subsequent nodes, which is to say this system is dependent on time. This super complicated system may be modeled using discrete mathematics. I'm not sure how to throw down the equations here, but some pretty straightforward predictions can be made: Increase in delay time at one node fucks up the rest of your trip. Also, freezing the whole system is all too easy.

Good luck with your holiday travels.