Chaos at airports, driven by staffing shortages and overwhelming travel demand, has led to a deluge of travellers having to deal with lost or delayed baggage. statistics favour a temporary misplacement of your bags versus something more permanent.
This is all to say that when your bag doesn’t appear at baggage claim, chances are it’s temporarily lost and will eventually be returned. Even so, here are some key things you can do when your bag is delayed — or lost — by an airline.
How to Determine if Your Luggage is Lost
To start, you need to know how to determine whether your bags are, in fact, missing. It could be that it arrived at destination but someone else took your bag as it may look similar to yours.
Be Patient
Airport baggage procedures can be exceedingly complex at large hubs, so waiting for 30 or even 45 minutes for bags is not only normal but expected. Luggage can come in waves from a single flight as well.
Look elsewhere If your bag doesn’t come off its designated carousel, there’s a slim chance it could have made the flight but been offloaded elsewhere. Take a quick look at other carousels to see if the bag somehow beat you there. It could also be waiting in the airline’s baggage office or another holding area.
Stay calm – If you’ve done the first two steps and still can’t find your bag, it’s time to alert the airline. getting worked up will not help the situation — and could exacerbate the problem. When you’re in a sufficiently calm state of mind, it’s time to act.
How to report a missing bag. Here are the steps to report a missing bag:
1. Locate the baggage desk for the airline that operated your final flight.
The first step is to find the airline baggage desk. If your entire trip was on a single airline, this should be simple.
However, if you were on a connecting itinerary with more than one airline, the claim must be filed with the operating carrier of your last flight since that airline is ultimately responsible for delivering your bag to you, even if the bag never made it into its system.
2. Once you’ve figured out where to report it, inform the agent that your luggage didn’t arrive as expected. Provide your copy of the bag tag that you received at check-in and have the agent look up your information. Alternatively, you could also proactively research your bag’s status in an airline’s app if possible.
3. File a missing baggage report. If an agent can’t provide any insight into the whereabouts of your bag, you need to file a missing baggage report. When you do this, include every bit of information you can about your bag and your travel plans, including the size, color and material of the bag and any identifying tags. Ensure the report has your local address and contact information, and be sure to get the phone number of the lost luggage desk as well as some type of reference or tracking number.
4. While you’re filing a report, be sure to ask what the airline is willing to provide for compensation as well as to what extent it will reimburse you. Eg. e, some carriers will keep amenity kits on hand in baggage offices to pass out to customers with missing luggage. they should provide some reimbursement for reasonable expenses.
The agent with whom you file the missing bag report should be able to provide you with the guidelines for the given carrier, including whether or not you’re eligible for a refund of any checked baggage fee you paid.
Just note that if you’re arriving back home after a vacation or business trip, the airline usually won’t cover any expenses for delayed baggage aside from returning your bag to you.
What to do if your baggage is delayed – some “lost” bags may be simply delayed in getting to you. Ideally, a carrier’s baggage agent (or even the airline’s app) can tell you exactly where the bag was last scanned. It may only be a matter of hours or just a day or two before you are reunited with your suitcase. Or purchase an air tag.
Once you’ve reported it to the airline, here are a few tips for handling a delay:
One of the most important things to include in your claim form is your local address. Do not offer or agree to return to the airport to retrieve your bags.
If your bag hasn’t arrived with you, the airline’s baggage office (or contract agency) is now responsible for returning it to you and should be willing to cover the cost of doing so.
Once you’ve reported your bag as missing, the waiting game begins. things like a change of clothes, a toothbrush, toothpaste and deodorant are usually considered “reasonable” purchases, so you should be reimbursed.
Even so, airlines usually require original receipts for every purchase you make Focus on the bare essentials in the hopes that your bag will arrive soon.
Escalate When Necessary
If you aren’t getting any updates through the online system and can’t get any details from the local airport, consider escalating the claim through other channels. Eg. What’s App and Twitter
You can also try calling customer service and, if you have elite status with the carrier, you may get a more proactive agent who’s willing to help.
Photos showing scores of bags piling up at Canadian airports have widely circulated around the internet in recent weeks, while some passengers have said they’ve been without their checked baggage for days, sometimes weeks.
airlines are legally required to compensate you in the event that your baggage is lost or delayed.
Under the Montreal Convention, airlines around the world are legally required to compensate travellers for any “reasonable” expenses incurred, such as the interim purchases to replace missing clothing and other essentials.
The Montreal Convention also stipulates that the reimbursement must be made in cash, cheque or credit to the passenger’s credit card, not travel vouchers. Airlines are also not allowed to impose daily limits on how much a passenger can spend on interim expenses.
How to File a Claim
If you can’t find your luggage at the baggage carousel, immediately inform airline staff at the airport to complete a missing baggage report.
Be sure to keep all of your receipts of any interim purchases you’ve made. Once you’ve been reunited with your luggage, you need to submit your claim within 21 days of getting it back. If a claim isn’t made within 21 days, the airline could deny your claim, according to the Air Passenger Protection Regulations.
If your baggage hasn’t arrived after 21 days, or if the airline admits your baggage is lost, its is considered lost for the purposes of receiving compensation. In this case, airlines are required to refund the checked baggage fee in addition to your interim expenses.
Be sure to include your name, address, contact information, travel date, flight number and baggage tag number, and the date and time when your baggage was delivered to you. You should also send over copies or scans of any supporting documents, such as your receipts.
Even if you have travel insurance that covers the cost of lost or delayed baggage, recommends getting a reimbursement with the airline first. You aren’t allowed to double-dip and claim reimbursement from both, as that would be considered insurance fraud.
What Happens if I Don’t Hear Back from the Airline?
Air Passenger Rights recommends allowing the airline 30 days to respond. But if the airline denies your claim or doesn’t respond, Canada’s Airline Passenger Protection Regulation says travellers can file a complaint with the Canadian Transportation Agency.
