What is the name for the tag at the end of a zipper? Aha, it’s the “slider” (I was about to write, “Who knows?” when I googled “zipper parts” and found the name for every last bit.) Oh–in reading further, no, the bit you can hold onto is the “pull tab,” the piece to which it attaches is the slider, which pulls together the teeth to form the “chain” which is what you called the zipped-up zipper when the teeth have been meshed together by the slider. Whew. Anyway–airline baggage equipment seems to eat pull-tabs. Has anyone else noticed that? I have several different sizes of luggage–the kind that looks like a wheelie carry-on, but in various sizes–and not one of them has all its pull-tabs any more. My latest travel must have impressed my fellow waiters-for-baggage no end, as my suitcase was attractively wrapped with the airline version of duct tape holding the outside pocket together. Fortunately it was just the zipper to the small pocket that had broken, and there had only been a scarf inside, which was actually still there. That’s the second outside pocket that has broken (the whole chain, not the pull tab). My guess is that whoever looks inside doesn’t pull the zipper back all the way to the locked position, it catches on something and that’s all she wrote. But the pull-tab issue is more prevalent. The zipper is still there, intact; the slider is still there; but the pull tab is gone. I’ve taken to carrying a spare paperclip in my wallet because trying to grab the little loop on the slider to open your suitcase hurts the fingers. Does anybody have a better suggestion? (Yeah, I know, at home I do use a pliers.) The missing pull tabs don’t seem to relate to the quality of the luggage, either. Yes, I’ve noticed that the ones where the pocket zippers actually break seem to be the less expensive pieces, but the pull tabs have disappeared even from one very expensive piece that I adore (it’s like a carry-on size of those pullman trunks people used to take on cruises, it zips exactly halfway through the middle and when it opens, one side is for hanging garments and then folding them into place). I wonder if somewhere at my local airport there’s a guy wearing a necklace of pulltabs–sort of like those fishermen of yore who wore necklaces of sharks’ teeth. Anybody have a better idea of how to keep, or replace, lost pull tabs? –Mary Hunt, editor, eFlyer