Lost luggage

MamaLema

DIS Veteran
Joined
May 17, 2004
DH came back from traveling a few days ago but his luggage hasn’t shown up yet

Tell me your lost luggage stories

How long did you wait for your bags?
Anyone had bags that never arrived?
 
Longest I have waited is until the following day. Thankfully they usually only lose my luggage on the way home. That isn't so bad. I have never had them lose it and not find it.
 
Longest I have waited was 5 days. All 23 passengers who flew NY to Mexico City before changing to a lifght to Puerto Vallarta did not get bags. We were told every day they would come the following day. took 5 days. United refused to pay any compensation, or any $$ towards toiletries, etc. citing it being internal Mexico so not their fault (we had a three hour layover in Mexico City--plenty of time).

Most times we get the bags within 24 hours, often delivered to the house after.

Most interesting was when my oldest was heading to the US as a college Freshman. DS and I were on the same flight, going to "drop off" and visit other realtives. Most of the luggage allowance all went to the university kid who would not be bale to come home on weekends for other things like a normal student. One trunk was lost. Airline employee wanted a list, to the best of our recolection of everything in the trunk. Um, that was the one with a sewing machine, Harry Potter robes, winter coat (this was in early August)..... Agent looked at us like we had two heads.

We've always eventually gotten our things. My mother in law did have one bag that was never returned though---aout 15 years ago. Non stop flight, DEN to LAX.
 
We had a piece of luggage get lost once. It was on our way home so not too big a deal, but they asked us to come back and get it when they found it. We said no, it would be a 2-1/2 hour drive to go back. So they did deliver it to us. It came the next day.
 
DH waited a week.
Changed planes at Heathrow on his way to India. Bag never showed. He picked it up on his way back through Heathrow (business trip too)

Other than that not lost.....just late. usually next day. Happened to him, me, us probably 5 or 6 times
 
On a positive note - I has four quarts of pretty expensive ice cream not make my flight. I got a call a couple of hours later from the baggage guy at Southwest saying that he found it and put it in the employee fridge and marked it up so no one would eat it. Happy ending :-)
 
Delta once lost my luggage on a direct flight to Atlanta. I waited around in the terminal for about two hours, while I thought they were looking for it or trying to figure out what happened. I finally just went to my hotel. A few hours later, I got a call that the luggage had been located, but since I left, I needed to figure out a way to get it. I had to pay a taxi service $50 to bring my luggage to me, and was not reimbursed by Delta. Later, when I called customer service to complain about the fact I had to pay for my luggage to be delivered, they told me they couldn't locate my name on the passenger manifest from my flight so they couldn't help me. That's my one and only lost luggage story, and it was a doozy - LOL!

Good luck!
 
I'm not sure if this counts, but a contracted airline lost several personal bags when my reserve unit deployed to Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm. My commander told me and a senior NCO to find them. We had no idea where they could have ended up, as there was no kind of tracking. We drove in Humvees and flew on military aircraft to contingency bases throughout the area (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai, and Bahrain). We had no luggage ourselves, just some hygiene items we carried in our pockets and sleeping bags. We slept wherever we could. There was even message traffic going around about us. We would show up at some location, and the person there would say, "Oh! You're those guys looking for the bags!" After a few days, we had given up. We were in a mobile home that served as a military air terminal in Bahrain, waiting for the next flight back to our base, and a guy in there on a break heard us talking. He said, "There's a bunch of bags out on our ramp." He took us to an equipment yard, and one of the carts was full of our bags!
 
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Many years ago, I flew to Toronto to get on a house boat in the 1000 Islands with friends. My luggage did not arrive. It got there later but we were on a boat and had no way for it to be delivered. I had to buy everything - swim suit, underwear, clothes, toiletries, and a bag to carry them - in a resort area (think ocean boardwalk). Hard to find underwear. Got the suitcase back when I got to the airport to fly home.

Another time flying home from Florida, my suitcase beat me. We got to the airport way early after a cruise. Tried to get an earlier flight but the cost wasn't worth it. Got to Baltimore and no luggage. Found it in an unclaimed area. It had come on the flight we didn't upgrade to.
 
Flew from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale the day of a cruise, the last time we flew in on the day of a cruise.

We arrived in Fort Lauderdale with no luggage. Delta's baggage representative told me the luggage missed the connecting flight. When I pointed out the plane didn't stop anywhere, she followed up with well we lost a lot of luggage today.

Our luggage did not catch up with us until day 4 of a 7 day cruise and almost didn't catch up with us even then. Our luggage was catching up with us in Puerto Rico but there had been a medical emergency on the ship and as a result the cruise line almost cancelled the Puerto Rico port of call. Instead we arrived late in the afternoon and had our luggage delivered to our room at 8pm on day 4.

Another time coming back from Fort Lauderdale we checked in as a big group and thought we had checked all our bags. We didn't realize we had not checked one of the bags until we arrived home in Atlanta. Six bags were retrieved, six bags were checked, bag seven was never checked. That one was difficult to open a lost bag claim with the airline (AirTran) since we did not have a bag tag number. A few weeks later I got a letter in the mail from the lost and found department at the Fort Lauderdale airport. They had our bag and wanted to know how we wanted to take delivery. I called AirTran and a couple days later our bag was delivered to our house.
 
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Like others, longest I waited was the next day - all on trips home, thankfully.

The best story I have is on a conference I had in Orlando. Direct flight, but no bag showed up on the carousel. After some runaround with baggage folks at the airport, they finally figured out what happened to it. Turns out, it was grabbed by Magical Express and was on a truck to the sorting center. Problem was, the conference wasn't at WDW and I wasn't staying anywhere onsite. Took something like 5-6 hours for them to deliver the bag to my hotel that day. I ended up stopping at one of the tourist traps shops on I-Drive to buy a swimsuit and a pair of flip flops to wear to the pool that afternoon.
 
I am the queen of lost luggage, or at least I used to be. From the age of 6 and I am now almost 49.

First time to Italy when I was 6 to visit family, we flew to Milan and my suitcase went to Athens. It showed up 10 days later. Luckily we were there for three weeks and I had cousins my age to borrow some clothes from.
Flight to Paris, suitcase showed up the next day.
Flight to Venice, suitcase showed up 3 days later the day we were moving on to another part of Italy.
Long weekend in Edinburgh, suitcase was stranded in England although we never flew through London. Picked it up when I was checking in for my flight home.

I have also had bags misplaced on the flight home a few more times. But the suitcase was delivered to my house within 24 hours.

Before the new International terminal was opened in the ATL airport, you had to put your bag on a conveyor belt after clearing customs and pick it up at domestic baggage claim. It never made it to the front of the airport. It had to be sent to my house the next day.

In all fairness, I have not lost a bag in about four and a half of five years now. I think my luck is finally changing.

All members of my family laugh about it when we travel because I really have bad luck with luggage. I always breathe a sigh of relief when my bag shows up.

I should probably try to fly carry on only more often, but my vacations tend to be 12-14 days and I like to have a few choices when I travel, so I guess I am still willing to check my bag.

Love the Delta app so I know my luggage was loaded onto the plane and then unloaded at the other end!
 
I can think of four instances off the top of my head, three going to vacation and one coming home.

Luggage was always delivered to where we were. Sometimes it was next day, once it was 2-3 days. The 2-3 days, the airline reimbursed us to go get clothing and toiletries.
 
On my first flight ever, my friend wouldn't put a ribbon on her bag. She told me that was stupid. She had a "unique" bag that no one else would have... i.e. it wasn't black. Turns out someone had the same bag and picked hers up. It went to Manchester while we were in London. While the airline found it, and was going to deliver it to us at our hotel, the transfer service lost it a second time and she never got it back. All for the price of a ribbon... She was lucky that I was a size bigger than she was, so we shared my clothes for the week we were there. If it was the other way around, we'd have had to go shopping to buy me something to wear.

We've had luggage lost on our way home that was delivered the next day. That's no big deal. However, we went to Punta Cana once and it was a comedy of errors. We didn't arrive the day we were supposed to and one of our bags was missing. Luckily, I cross-pack, so we all had things to wear, however, our toiletries were in that bag. I got to buy a $10 men's deodorant for all of us to use (I didn't think my DH would want to smell baby powder fresh) and a cheap hair brush for a ton of money. Luckily, the resort had toothbrushes and toothpaste for us. the bag arrived on the evening before we were leaving. The bag was torn and tattered. We were able to get some duct tape and it survived the ride home.

That's when I learned to carry on whenever and to wherever I can.
 
Before the new International terminal was opened in the ATL airport, you had to put your bag on a conveyor belt after clearing customs and pick it up at domestic baggage claim. It never made it to the front of the airport. It had to be sent to my house the next day.

One time years ago, flying home through JFK internationally, the whole customs area was under construction (heck, probably still is :p ). Once we cleared customs, we were directed to an area where there were hundreds of bags just lined up, seemingly going nowhere. They instructed us to leave our bags there and they would head on to our flight from there. I kissed that bag goodbye! :rotfl2: Sure enough, it was the next day when it finally made it home. I barely even waited at baggage claim before getting in line at customer service to fill out a claim - I knew it wasn't going to make it.
 
Flight before our Disney cruise: flew in a day early, but to Tampa. Two out of nines bags did not show up on the direct flight. Spent a couple hours at the airport trying to straighten it out, and was assured they would find them. One bag had all of my young son's clothes, and the other had all of my wife's shoes.

Went ahead and drove to Port Orleans where we were spending the night. Got up early the next morning to make sure they were working on it, but at this point, no guarantees. They ended up arriving at Tampa, put them on a plane to Fort Lauderdale, and then another flight to Orlando. Disney Cruise Line picked them up and put them in a van and drove them to the cruise ship. They got to the ship right at 4:00 when they were closing up the gangway. It would have been a pretty miserable cruise week if they hadn't have made it.
 

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