Baggage mystery

[Houdi]

We went to New York on Friday and had an odd experience at JFK airport. We passed through immigration and headed for the carousel along with the other passengers. From where we were standing we could see the bags come down a central chute to join the carousel. They would disappear from view temporarily as they joined the opposite side of the carousel then reappear as they rounded the corner before passing by where we were standing. As time passed, the passengers collected their bags and began to disperse. We then saw our own bags come down the chute and disappear from view as normal but they never came round to our side. We acted quickly and checked that nobody was trying to take the bags through customs before we did anything else. We didn't find them so we walked around the carousel to find that they had been removed (along with several other bags) from the carousel. This wasn't at the bottom of the chute but half way round, just out of sight of where we had been standing. There was a man wearing a uniform (a bit like a chauffeur's) and carrying a clip board busily removing more bags. He wasn't removing all the bags though. He appeared to be following a list on the clipboard and removing specific bags. We were very tired so we couldn't be bothered to ask him the ins and outs of what he was doing. He clearly wasn't a police officer, security guard or similar. In fact, he didn't seem to have any official capacity at all and didn't challenge us when we took our bags. There was no harm done and we went on our way, chatting to a few people who'd had a similar experience. One lady hadn't been watching the chute. She'd picked her own bag off the carousel within the first few minutes then waited for around 30 minutes for a her son's bag which she later found in the mysterious pile. The carousel wasn't full so I'm intrigued to know who this man was and why our bags were selected for removal without our knowledge. Any ideas?

[rcl1]

Cant supply you with an answer but i have flown to and from JFK 3 times and never come across this problem. Will keep my eye out for it if i am lucky enough to go again though.

[Clanad]

I suspect that several of the passengers on your flight were booked by a travel agent for a tour. They were all together for the duration and probably the tourmaster had arranged a bus to the hotel or other destination. In those cases (no pun intended) a tour employee has a list of baggage provided by the passengers and most often the bags have an identifying tag or other marker known to the person you observed collecting them and listed on the clipboard. This is a service provided by the tour.
Somehow, your bags must have resembled those on his list. Known as "bag shift" in the industry and we all know shift happens...

[Houdi]

I suspect that he was some kind of bus or limo driver but we didn't book through a tour operator. We just purchased the flight directly from American Airlines.