This has not been a good year in terms of lost or mislaid bags, with record numbers going astray. Colin Ellson investigates and has some practical advice to offer.
They are the mystery aircraft the airline would probably not wish to talk about. Jumbo jets flying across the Atlantic without passengers but packed with items you or a fellow business traveller might yearn to get your hands on. Such are the Boeing 747s British Airways is using to carry the luggage thought lost but subsequently retrieved. A sort of mercy mission, flown in the hope of reuniting it with its owners before they blow a fuse. An understandable reaction in the face of the deafening silence about the Samsonite packed with personal and business belongings which had apparently disappeared into Heathrow’s very own version of the Bermuda Triangle. The problem is not confined to London’s premier airport, of course, as frequent flyers worldwide, constantly nagged by the thought of his or her suit or spreadsheet going fly about, will tell you. The gateway is, however, the focus of the present problem. Suffering from overcapacity, operations delayed by some of the tightest security in the world, so short of baggage handlers that office workers and outside agencies have been called in to help, Heathrow and its main airline, BA, were responsible for sending 22,000 items of luggage into limbo in July. Overall, from wherever they were flying, some 20 bags for every 1,000 passengers were delayed in early summer, according to the Association of European Airlines. Rome Fiumicino, in particular, was a culprit, with thousands of items going astray over the busiest weekend of the holiday season. Based on AEA statistics, this means that, conservatively, the 100,000 travellers who passed through the airport lost 2,000 cases and their cool. Sadly, such problems have traditionally littered the path of the road warrior off to sell goods and services around the world. But figures released by travel insurance firm Insureandgo confirm the situation is deteriorating dramatically. In the first six months of 2007, it received 2,094 lost luggage claims, a year-on-year rise of 85%. All of which begs the question of how to avoid this airport/airline version of Russian Roulette, and if the worst happens and a bullet in the chamber has your name on it, the best way to get adequate compensation. Should baggage go missing, file a complaint immediately. The airline will usually offer an instant, one-off payment to cover emergency purchases, but bags are not considered lost until more than 21 days have elapsed. And remember that travel insurance is the best way of ensuring you recoup your losses. You will probably get a better settlement, even allowing for the excess on the policy. There is a watertight way of ensuring you and your luggage remain bosom pals throughout a trip but it is costly. Among similar companies, UK-based Mail Boxes Etc will collect your bags the day before departure, pick the best carrier for the chosen route, using only those with hold space on freight rather than passenger aircraft, and guarantee your cases will be waiting for you at the hotel in your destination. Bags of advice...
The experts' advice is basic commonsense, but worth repeating.
- Put your name on the outside and inside of checked bags, with a copy of your itinerary in each so the airline can locate you.
- Avoid late check-ins, the most common cause of luggage going astray.
- Pack valuables and documentation necessary to the trip in carry-on bags.
- Make a list of everything in the luggage going into the hold so you can justify the value of any subsequent claim.
- Watch carefully to make sure check-in staff attach the correct destination tickets to all bags and get a claim slip for each. Lost cause If luggage does not arrive on the carousel, report its loss to an agent or representative of the airline. They must complete a Property Irregularity Report (PIR) and give you a copy. Next, write to the airline to claim compensation, bearing in mind it might take up to six weeks to accept the baggage is lost, although the Montreal Convention stipulates 21 days. Once liability has been confirmed, the carrier's maximum compensation payment is 1,000 Special Drawing rights (SDRs). Yes, we had to look it up. Basically, this is the unit of account of the International Monetary Fund, based on the value of a basket of currencies. In approximate terms, 1SDR is the equivalent of US$1.50, which means your compensation will work out to around US$1,500/€1,104/£750.
The cost of express delivering an average-sized suitcase to Germany, for example, is around £88 (€130/US4178), or £150 (€222/US$303) to the States. Too much? Not according to travellers, who send over 100,000 shipments a year worldwide using Mail Boxes.
“The service doesn’t come cheap,” admits Simon Cowie, the company's chairman. “But the real advantage is convenience. It allows the traveller to cut down on the hassle factor, as not having luggage means a faster check-in. It also reduces the worry of whether a bag will turn up at the other end.” On reflection, the thousands of travellers who flew through Heathrow recently and are still waiting for their luggage might consider the price of such a service a fair trade off for weeks of anxiety. They can only hope that one of those stealth jets will solve the case of those errant bags missing presumed gone to that great arrivals hall in the sky.
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