jazzsax

I didn't read all the details, just saw his twitter posts and looks like he had posted at 9, 14, 18 days. Agreed if it's at 21 days just pay it out. (Obviously accounting for normal processing times... send cheque / payout requisition to payables, issue cheque, mail cheque). Wouldn't be surprised if that added a few extra weeks.

But yes, the guy is a snowflake and I have zero compassion for him. I'm going to assume he also didn't pay for his flight on a credit card with travel insurance to cover him in the meantime...

Wpgjetse

AC can make a lot of mistakes, but one thing one should not underestimate is their lawyers. It maybe good for you to understand this as your case goes to court with AC.

Adam Smith

@Ken: I'm with eigenvector here.

Actually, many years ago, I was flying AZ and, at the time, their carry-on policy was one bag, period. No one bag plus personal item or anything like that. I was forced to choose between the small duffel in which I carried a few days worth of clothes etc and my laptop bag, which had by $3000 laptop in it. (In theory, I could have moved a bunch of stuff from the duffel to a checked bag, then put the laptop bag inside the duffel, but both the duffel and checked bag were very full and this would have been a lengthy and difficult exercise). I figured lost/delayed clothes were fairly replaceable, but the expensive laptop, not so much, so I took the laptop bag on.

Everything was fine on the outbound (LHR-FCO-FLR; well, not fine, AZ is terrible and there were various foul-ups, but that's for another forum; I got my bags back and so on), but on the way back (FLR-MXP-LHR), my checked bags were delayed several days and a couple of souvenirs were broken when I finally got them. Had I checked the laptop bag and it been broken, sure, AZ would have been at fault, but I would have been an idiot for not thinking it through and therefore partially to blame as well.

Just like this jerk. AC screwed up (or UA did and AC has to bear the responsibility, whatever), but he's a moron for checking his laptop. And he's also a moron if he didn't have a backup of his research, if it was that important to him.

Marlin240

CZAMFlyer

I'm in agreement with Ken. Yes, the guy made a questionable decision to place a laptop in checked luggage, but it's the airline's fault for failing to deliver his property. It doesn't matter if his bag was filled with a laptop, clothes, styrofoam chips or wads of thousand-dollar bills; a lost bag is a lost bag is a lost bag. I see a lot of people shifting blame onto the passenger, and in doing so deflecting from the real story that AC can't find an item entrusted to its care.

Who among us doesn't admire online bullying. I wonder if it's possible to articulate that he made a poor decision without playground name-calling.

ridefar

How can he not have a backup? Seriously? It is like $5 to $10 a month for online, daily, offsite in "the cloud" etc. If it really was the only copy of his research, he is 100% screwed, and no compensation from AC is really going to make up for what he lost. If it isn't truly the only copy, then he should just recognize he made a bad judgement call, collect some compensation, and move on.

DrunkCargo

Do you mean their inhouse losers or the hired firms? I respect the latter. I've dealt with the former.

Except AC is being dumdum and not just cutting the cheque. It's a whole $2k. Like ... A month's salary for some AC employees. No. No cheque.

And yes, fail his PhD or whatever smarty-pants research he was doing. Duh.

aulrik

To be brutally honest; If you aren't responsible enough to keep a backup of your "research material" you don't deserve a PhD. It's been 20 years since I completed my PhD, and even back then we were drilled in the importance of backup, and that was long before super easy solutions like Dropbox and Google Drive existed. I can't possibly imagine an University that do not emphasize the importance of good backup routines for their students, but this guy probably felt he was superior and knew better, and now he has to pay the ultimate price for it.

DrunkCargo

I was being a little sarcastic. I don't think he was working on his PhD. Some arts thing.. maybe pictures of naked kittens or I dunno... Research.

Adam Smith

Did you even read my post? AC clearly screwed up by losing this guy's bag. Or maybe UA lost it, but it's AC he has to go to.

Let's say you leave your wallet sitting around in a public place while you wander off to do something else. You come back and your cash and credit cards are gone. Is the person who took your stuff a thief? Absolutely, 100%. But shouldn't you have known better? Absolutely.

Same thing here. This guy should get his $2Kish legally entitled compensation and a sincere apology from AC. And he should learn his lesson not to check such important and valuable possessions in the future.

Get real. The guy made an incredibly stupid decision. I and others have called it like it is.

Northern Canuck

IMO this is news not because AC lost his bag but because AC has not paid out after 21 days as stipulated in the Montreal Convention. It seems that AC likes bad publicity since most of the garbage we hear about AC is dealt with quickly once it hits the news. What is wrong with AC????

songsc

I hope we don't need to take it to the small claim court for AC to oblige Montreal Convention.

Sure that guy made a bad decision. That laptop can be lost or damaged in so many ways, without any backup it's waiting for a disaster. But let's move on, hopefully he and other people can learn from this.

canadiancow

Do we know whether AC ever received the bag?

They're definitely liable for compensation, but is it fair to say "AC can't find an item entrusted to its care" without any evidence to support that claim?

Adam Smith

No, we don't know whether AC received it. From the way WR Cage described the transfer process at ORD, it seems like the guy could have easily dropped it off mistakenly with UA and AC might never have gotten it.

flyquiet

My experience invoking the Convention is that you have to convey that you know your entitlements.

For me, they tried "policy" (not to reimburse), then "as a special consideration" giving me a token payment, and only when I asked them to explain to me why the Convention did not apply, a cheque for the remainder wordlessly landed in my mailbox.

I suppose it is good business sense - you do what you HAVE to do, but don't go out of your way to do it.

My case was similar in that AC was the last carrier but the previous carrier was the guilty party that did not load the bag - I feel for AC being stuck with the claim, but I'm sure the airlines have procedures to settle these things among them, and aren't stuck with it for long.

I'll pile on the poor judgement of the traveller to pack an un-backed-up laptop in a checked bag but agree that he should be compensated per the Convention for the tangible losses.

It's possible the traveller had a backup of data from before the trip and only lost the data acquired on the trip, but considered it valuable, and/or was laying it on thick for CBC in regards to the value. (I often go a few days without a backup while travelling, although I don't let my laptop out of my sight.)

Backups are a relatively new thing in the era of computers. Some time before that, a friend of mine took a short holiday (or maybe it was a honeymoon, I can't recall) during his PhD and returned to campus to find his office building had burned to the ground and been plowed under, with all his paper notes and drafts etc. in it. Said he drove around campus wondering if he had taken a wrong turn, or if the building had been moved.