Don't lose your baggage! Survival and Prevention Guide

At this very moment, many people are making endless lists of things they want to take on holiday. Still, when traveling by plane, it might be better to keep it short since the most frequent complaints are those related to delayed or lost luggage. Indeed, these represent 20% of the total amount of complaints made by passengers.

Nowadays, the most important regulation when it comes to passengers’ rights and especially, delayed and lost luggage, is the Montreal Convention of 1999. According to it, “mishandled” baggage is deemed lost after 21 days and the largest sum of money an airline company may have to pay is 1000 Special Drawing Rights (SDR) whose exchange rate fluctuates. Currently, it approximately amounts to €1,030, $1,630 or ₤820.  

During 2007 in the UK, insurance companies had to pay £35 millions for 430,000 complaints related to lost luggage.

A few pieces of advice before flying 

To minimize the impact in the case of delayed or lost luggage, you’d better follow the next few lines:

1. Try to put your most important and valuable belongings in your hand-luggage (laptop, medicines, jewels, …).
2. Avoid taking things whose value you cannot prove. Should your suitcases be lost, you will have to prove the value of the items it contained to be refunded, which is very difficult not to say almost impossible: indeed, you’ll have to provide receipts for all the items and personal effects contained on the suitcase. Since it is pretty difficult to do so, the easiest thing to do is to only take belongings and items for which you still have a receipt or a proof of payment (from the credit card for example).
3. Make a list of all the items you put in your luggage. You can even take a picture of them as well as of the suitcase to facilitate its identification.
4. Read the policy of the airline you travel with in order to know what they cover in case of loss. Note that jewels, computers and other electronic devices are generally not covered.

What to do if your luggage is lost?

If for any reason your luggage goes missing, i.e. it doesn’t arrive at the airport at the same time as you, you should:

On the other hand, you can also visit the airlines’ websites: most of them have an automated baggage tracing and management system such as WorldTracer, which enables one to follow the progress of the search for delayed or lost luggage.

Note that only 1% of the luggage remain lost after 60 days and most of it is found within the first 24-48 hours.  

The worst airports in baggage handling

When traveling by plane, be careful with your lugagge, especially in some airports: Philadelphia, in the United States, and in Heathrow, in London, are the airports which are listed as having the highest number of missing luggage.  

At the end of 2006, beginning of 2007, some problems concerning passengers’ luggage took place at Heathrow. Amongst others, the reasons for these troubles were the establishment of new security norms and regulations, the opening of a new terminal, and on top of all this, the breakdown of a conveyor belt, resulting in thousands bags and suitcases being stranded in the terminal until their owners came to pick them up.

What about the airlines?

When it comes to airlines, US Airways has the highest percentage of missing luggage in the United States with almost 10 complaints out of 1000 passengers. The US Department of Transportation  reports that more than 40% of the overall complaint figure has to do with missing baggage and inolves US Airways. The latter loses around 3,000-4,000 suitcases and bags everyday in Philadelphia.

In Europe, British Airways is the second worst company with 26.5 pieces of luggage going missing for every 1000 passengers in 2007. Still the “winner” in the list is TAP Air Portugal with 27.8 missing suitcases for every 1000 passengers. The average figure reported by the Association of European Airlines (AEA) is of 16.6 which represent a 0.9% general rise in lost luggage as compared to 2006.

On the other hand, the best airlines, when it comes to baggage management are Turkish Airlines and Air Malta.

In the following table, you can find the rank of every company pertaining to the Association of European Airlines in 2007. Note that no information can be found about Ryanair in this table but on their website, the company allege that the number of lost suitcases is lower than 1 for every 1000 passengers. The AEA asserts that there is no reason to doubt the liability of the information.

On the other hand, if you lose your suitcase and don’t claim it, the airlines are obliged to keep it for 3 months. After 90 days, they have the right to sell it. There are shops such as UnclaimedBaggageCenter, in the United States, or auctioneers who buy the suitcases nobody has claimed in Heathrow or Gatwick to sell them every week in Toothing, South London.

After reading this, we hope you’ll keep in mind our comments and pieces of advice and we wish you a pleasant flight.

Written: 28 jul 2008, 10:04 by Logitravel | with 0 comments

Filed under: flight, airports, holidays, lugagge, airline, vacations