pinniped

Totally agree with you in almost all cases. With a baggage loss or delay on an airline where you have elite status, you can usually find a human to talk to and get some reimbursement. Overnight delay of baggage...a couple times over the years on AA or UA...has always resulted in an acceptable level of reimbursement of expenses with little time invested at the airport or on the phone. ($100-200 per incident. Time spent fighting for a higher reimbursement would outweight the benefit of the reimbursement, so I always kept the request small and never got any pushback about it.) I wouldn't buy insurance for that.

My concern on this one is that I think I have one key connection where my bags are a high probability of delay. Interlining from RJ to 9W in DEL, int'l to int'l. I hold no status on 9W so when that bag is gone, I know the odds of Jet Airways chipping off $100-200 for me to go buy clothes is pretty much nonexistent.

So I think my risk factor is pretty high on this one...and my recourse/leverage through the airline is low. That makes having a baggage component to the insurance product worthwhile to me. This time, anyway.