Your flight just landed at its destination, and you’re standing at the baggage carousel with the other passengers. You’re waiting to grab your bag off the slow-moving conveyor belt so that you can make your way through the airport. You watch as everyone around you spots their bag on the carousel, picks it up, and leaves. As time goes on, you start to feel a pit of dread in your stomach. You’re one of the last people standing around the carousel, and you haven’t seen a sign of your bag.
Your bag must be lost, right? It’s too early to determine if your bag is officially lost. At the moment, it’s simply missing. It could have been loaded on the wrong flight or left at a connecting airport. This is why airlines refer to missing bags as “delayed” for a short period of time. There is still a possibility that the bags are not lost for good.
An airline will only declare your bags as lost after searching for a period of time and finding no results. This could take a few days to several weeks, depending on the airline involved.
So, don’t panic just yet. Follow these tips on what to do if your bag didn’t arrive with you.
File a Baggage Claim
Once you’re sure that your bags aren’t coming out on that baggage carousel, you should make your way to the airline’s baggage desk right away. Tell the representative that your bags are missing. They will help you file a delayed baggage report.
After you’ve filed your report, you will receive a reference number. You can use this reference number to check the progress of your baggage through the airline’s website. The representative may also contact you via phone call, text, or email to update you about your bag’s status.
Replace Essentials
Your bag might be full of items that you desperately need. It could have all of your clothes — you might only have the clothes on your back for the foreseeable future. It could have prescription medications that you need to take every single day. It could have tech devices that you need to complete your job or your schoolwork. Are you supposed to suffer without these?
No. What you should do is replace these essentials as soon as possible. You can use savings from your emergency fund to pay for these expenses. After all, losing your only bag is considered a fairly serious travel emergency.
If you don’t have enough savings sitting in your emergency fund, you can charge the essential expenses to your credit cards. Or you can visit a website like CreditFresh to see whether you’re eligible for an emergency personal loan in the form of a line of credit. As long as you meet all of the loan requirements, you can quickly fill out your application online. It could take you around five minutes to do. And if you get approved for the personal loan, you could use the borrowed funds to cover your essential expenses in a short amount of time.
Keep Your Receipts
Whenever you purchase replacements for your essential items, you will want to keep your receipts. You’ll want documented proof that you’ve made these purchases right after your bags have gone missing. These receipts will act as supporting documents when you submit a baggage claim.
An airline is required to compensate any passengers that have had to make incidental purchases while their bags are considered delayed. These purchases will need to be verifiable — which means you will need to hold onto those receipts.
How much can they cover? When it comes to domestic flights, airlines have a maximum liability limit of $3,800 per passenger. When it comes to international flights, the Montreal Convention states that airlines have a maximum liability limit of approximately $1700 (US) per passenger.
What if that’s not enough? Anything that the airline doesn’t cover through your baggage claim could be covered by your travel insurance plan. Your insurer will also want verifiable proof of the incidental purchases you made when you file a claim.
Follow these tips as soon as you notice that your bag is missing. Hopefully, you’ll be reunited with it soon!
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