British Airways Baggage Claim and compensation for lost or mishandled luggage
British Airways reported record profits in 2007 but they also broke another record: losing my baggage on the same route twice. British Airways has the poorest record of lost, damaged or mishandled baggages among 24 European airlines.
The Air Transport Users Council published in 2007 that British Airways mishandles the baggage of 23 passengers in 1,000. In other words, the chances are that at least 5 passengers in an average plane will have their baggage mishandled by BA!
Not only the loss or damage is unsettling: wasting time queueing to claim your baggage, waiting to have the baggage delivered for days, calling an indetermined number of time to get updates about the baggage, buying basic items that were left in the baggage, etc. The liability for baggage delay is limited to approximately EUR1,000 or £800 (1,000 SDRs) upon the Montreal Convention.
The liabilities notice of British Airways do not specify which are the criteria to claim and to reimburse compensation for mishandled luggage and their only available information is deliberately blurred, since they are not legally obliged to do so. Neither they specify for how long you can claim compensation after they mishandled the luggage. Ugh’s Greymatter Honeypot stated yesterday that you can claim back for more than one year surprises me, for some reason I thought that you have only 15 days to claim from the day of the incident.
British Airways site has an online lost baggage claim form which it not followed by a confirmation of the submission by email or with a letter. I keep a template for my claims and it works, so you may just print it or save for your next flight. I hope that you don’t need it:
[Date]
[Name]
[First line address]
[Town]
[Postcode]
British Airways
Baggage Claims Unit (S506)
PO Box 5619
Sudbury
Suffolk
CO10 2PG
RE: Lost baggage claim File Reference:
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing to you in connection with the above claim of [date].
This is my formal request for you to send me a cheque with compensation for every day without my baggage and for the expenses I incurred in due to your loss of my baggage to a total of [Euro/GBP]. I attach copies of the invoices for items such as toiletries, underware, , etc.
The flight code was from the airport . The baggage was delivered two days later at an address in . I refer to the form I filled on for further details.
I look forward to receiving the compensation that I am entitled to within the next 10 working days
Yours faithfully,
Name
You may download the template of Lost baggage claim.
It British Airways lost or delayed your baggage, not let 21 days pass and claim all the expenses you incurred in. Don’t expect an explanation of the incident and far less an apology frin British Airways, but to claim your cheque!
There is a US law company who are filing a class action lawsuit against BA on behalf of US customers citing “Reckless Handling”. If proven, it will remove the limit of liability, and prove to be very expensive for BA.
We have had the exact same scenario. It has been almost 3 months since we filed a claim but there is nothing concrete. We were trav elling as a family of 3 to the US for a holiday and got our luggage only after 14 days. It did come to our Boston address after 5 days, but we had left for LA by then. Inconvenience, we did understand, but this delay is driving us crazy.
If your luggage was lost for a few days but then delivered you should consider yourselves very lucky. Mine was lost on a trip from Rome to Vancouver on September 22, 2009, and to-date January 30, 2010, still no sign of it and no refund or compensation, from British Airways, for all my best clothes and gifts purchased in Rome. Has anyone out there had better luck with B.A.?
I am interested in your correspondent’s blog…Simon C 4 May 2009 referring to a class action lawsuit against BA for US passengers alleging “reckless handling”. my client lost the benefit of a 16 day “trip of a lifetime” in Feb 09 travelling business class with BA when BA lost her luggage on the Sydney -London leg where she was connecting to a Munich flight. She had to cancel some business and turn up to other meetings in the clothes she wore out of Sydney Summer. Luggage turned as she was about to leave on London flight bound for Vancouver.Flight delays and a squalid overnight hotel stay with starvation level food voucher, followed with indifference and discourtesy from BA staff regardless of Biz class tickets. On delayed arrival in Vancouver, no luggage again!!! Her on-flight to a Rockies ski resort meant she had to depend on Vancouver to find her luggage. It turned up 9 days later, the night before she was due to return to Vancouver. In the meantime all she had to wear was what she wore or could borrow, because the ski resort did not carry much stock of clothes or substitutes for her packed requirements. It was a Au$ 24,000 disaster. Please do not publish this as a blog without consent of my client, as it may prejudice negotiations with BA.
There is a line of authority in Australia based on the common law concept of “fundamental breach” of contract, which says that there are certain fundamentals in contract which can’t be disclaimed by exemption clauses. The fundamentals are “transfer me and my luggage safely from A to B”. Perhaps the US lawyers are looking at that. Trouble is getting around the international conventions (Warsaw, Montreal) which acknowledge liability for damage but circumscribe the payout.
Can you put me in touch with Simon C so I can enquire whether he knows the name of the US Attorneys who are planning to commence a class action to which my client might be interested in participating?