Singaporean Baggage Handler Who Swapped Hundreds of Bag Tags Gets Jail Time

A baggage handler in Singapore’s Changi Airport is now facing jail time after swapping the tags of 286 bags, sending them to the wrong destinations, because he was unhappy with his workload.

For the not-so-innocent prank, Tay Boon Keh, 66, was sentenced to 20 days in jail on Monday, Nov. 11.

This, after a police investigation confirmed that he was behind the act, which cost airline companies a total of SG$42,000(US$30,866) in compensation to 221 affected passengers.

Tay admitted to the act, which happened between November 2016 and February 2017, while he was under the employment of Lian Cheng Contracting, a sub-contractor of the Changi Airport Group.

He did the switcheroo because he was unhappy with his tasks at work, which included aligning baggage and placing them within the guides to undergo an inspection from an x-ray machine.

The court heard that towards the end of September, one of the machines Tay was assigned to work at stopped functioning several times a day. He was forced to carry the check-in bags of varying loads to another working x-ray machine 6 metres away.

Tay complained to his supervisor about the faulty machine and his newly-adopted role of shuttling the baggage back and forth, but due to a lack of extra staff and manpower, his complaints went unheeded and he was forced to endure the “physically tiring” routine.

Feeling exploited and overworked, the disgruntled employee admitted to devising a ploy to highlight the lack of manpower, and bring light to his grievances.

"The accused had come up with a plan to exact revenge on his employer for perceived unfair working conditions and abused his position… over close to 3½ months," District Judge Jasvender Kaur said, according to The Straits Times.

As a result of Tay’s transgressions, two carriers, Singapore Airlines and SilkAir, received 20 emails from passengers with complaints of lost and rerouted baggage. This prompted a representative from the airport’s ground handling company, SATS, to file a police report. After the report was filed, another 266 complaints streamed in from passengers, including complaints of tampered baggage tags.

Although there were indications of mental illness prompting the offence, a Newton hearing did not find a link between Tay’s depressive disorder and the infraction. Judge Kaur said she found that his major depressive disorder "had not caused or significantly contributed to the offending.”

"A clear message has to be sent out to potential offenders that such acts have major consequences and that they should always resort to other more appropriate and legal channels to vent their frustrations," Kaur said, according to Channel News Asia.

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