Reasons For Delayed, Damaged Or Lost Baggage {At Airports}

Post Last Modified – February 15, 2025 ¦ gr8traveltips.com

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Reasons Why Your Baggage Is Delayed, Damaged Or Lost

I was watching our National News on television, and there was a very interesting segment specifically dealing with …

🧳 Delayed Damaged Or Lost Baggage

The short broadcast dealt with the; who, what, where, why, when and how your luggage ends up this way, both before and/or after your flight.

The feature was so interesting, I thought I would pass their message on to you as well.

Statistics Regarding Your Delayed Or Lost Luggage

Firstly and which is reassuring, is that 99% of luggage lost in transit, is rightfully returned to its owner within 48 hours of being reported missing.

That’s good news when you consider the amount of baggage that is reported either; lost, missing or damaged each and every day.

In fact, it costs the Industry 2.9 Billion U.S. Dollars in mishandled luggage. Yikes, no wonder airfares can be so costly to the consumer at certain times of the year.

In Canada where this broadcast originated from, the Canadian Transport Agency stated that 25-30% of all complaints they receive, come from issues related to passengers baggage.

Why Your Baggage Became – Lost, Delayed Or Damaged

Shown below as an example, are the 2017 Statistics for Canada alone, on the reasons why your 🧳 baggage didn’t arrive with you at your chosen destination:

🧳 47% of bags were delayed because of transfer mishandling;
🧳 16% resulted in failure to load the right airplane;
🧳 15% were as a result of ticketing errors, bag switches, security and other reasons;
🧳 10% involved issues at the airport, customs, weather or space weight load restrictions.

As well, the report did say that unfortunately, sometimes airport staff are to blame for mishandling 🧳 luggage, in regards to theft and other means.

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Where My Baggage Goes After The Check In Counter

When you check in at the airport with the ticket agent for your airline, as you may know, your 🧳 luggage is weighed, tagged and then sent down the conveyor belt.

Your luggage tag includes;

Your name, destination code, bar code and a unique serial number given to your bag for tracking purposes.

You may also notice that your bag tracking numbers stubs are usually stapled to your boarding pass.

This is very important should you lose your bag, as it is needed for reclaiming purposes.

Here’s where the fun begins for your bag, depending on where you are and what airport you are leaving from around the world.

At most major airports, your luggage then travels down a sophisticated – baggage handling system. Picture an inter looping highway with many exits and so forth.

For example, the Dubai airport has over 90 kilometers of conveyor belts, handling around 15,000 items an hour. Your luggage can reach speeds of up to 27 kph on this luggage highway system!

Airport Baggage Handling Conveyor

While on the conveyor, each bag is scanned by high tech security screening and either given a green or red light. If green, your baggage continues on to its final destination for loading. If red, it’s diverted and may be personally inspected by an agent.

A note is normally left with your bag indicating that it was opened by an inspector. The Transportation Security Administration in the United States, stated that it generally takes less than 2 minutes to inspect a bag.

Note:

The Most Critical Time for your luggage during transit, is when you are taking a Connecting Flight. This is where your baggage has to be transferred from one plane to another.

This is especially true for flights with a short connection ⏰ time.

My wife and I had a long haul flight to the Philippines from Canada a few seasons back, with a connecting flight with the same airline.

It is a short connection of only 1 ½ hours, so we were quite concerned if our backpacks would arrive with us.

Luckily, our backpacks did arrive with our connecting flight which was a relief. It would have been a great inconvenience for us, as we were traveling by bus a long way from the airport after arriving!

I’m definitely going to make sure I pack my bathing suit, shorts, t shirt and flip flops in my carry on, the next time we have a similar connecting long haul flight to a tropical destination.

Entitlement To Your Delayed Lost Or Damaged Baggage

What you are entitled to depends strictly with your chosen airlines specific policies.

In 1999, the International Air Transport Authority created what is known as the {Montreal Convention}. It set common rules between 120 countries around the world on protecting passengers traveling on International Flights.

Air Canada Plane

In Canada for example, airlines may be liable to pay up to $2000, which will most definitely take care of the majority of claims a person would make. New regulations were introduced by the Canadian Government a few seasons ago, to assist passengers for flight delays, cancellations and more.

The United States has since, also enacted similar regulations.

It’s also important to note that with many travel related credit cards offered these days, have inclusions and compensation for {delayed or lost checked luggage} after so many hours.

This will generally cover expenses for having to buy clothing and so forth during that period.

credit card theft

For example, we have a travel related credit card that offers; medical, cancellation insurance, rental car collision coverage and other inclusions.

It also covers delayed checked baggage that has gone beyond 4 hours, at arrival to your final destination.

The card will cover essential items that were contained in your checked baggage. This includes; clothing and toiletries that must be replaced during the period of delay up to $1000.

When Baggage Is Officially Lost

Just where could your bag have ended up anyway

Well, it most cases, it’s sitting abandoned with all the other luggage at the airports lost and found, or elsewhere.

Be sure to check out my …

Lost Luggage Travel Tips

additional post here on this subject.

It’s about how I eventually recovered my sons baggage he lost at an airport overseas, after gone missing for 3 months at least! The photo below shows his bag, after it was delivered back to us.

It most cases, your bag cannot be tracked because the baggage tag has fallen off, or it didn’t even make it to the check in counter, as was my sons case.

Also, many bags have no identification tags on them, that could help identify a way of contacting the rightful owner.

Usually after a period of 90 days your poor bag is officially declared; Orphaned.

It can then be either Donated, Thrown Out or even Sold to a Third Party.

Conclusion & Recommendations

Gr8 Travel Tips Survey Man

In wrapping things up here, the best advice and the best way to completely avoid this interruption in a perfect world, would be to travel with carry on luggage only.

If this isn’t feasible, then I suggest;

Take pictures of your bags;

Put a tag on your luggage that indicates a way for the airline or airport to contact you;

Don’t lose your checked baggage identification tags needed for claiming;

Get a travel credit card with lost and/or delayed baggage coverage;

Hope you aren’t included in the 1% of luggage that isn’t returned to its owner.

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Safe and Healthy Travels!

signature of author and owner Robert Tellier at https://gr8traveltips.com

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