Originally Posted by
Aviatrix
etch5895, what you are describing is not how it should be, and I am talking both from personal experience and as someone who has previously worked for an airline (in an all-round customer service capacity which included dealing with delayed baggage)
My baggage has been delayed on many many occasions over the years, and not once was I made to return to the airport and pick it up and take it through customs myself.
When my baggage misconnects on the way home it is always delivered to my house which is 60 miles from the nearest airport. I've had baggage delivered to me over similar distances in Germany (and remember chatting to the driver on one such occasion, and being told that his next call was a further 100 km away from the airport). I've had baggage delivered from DTW to my friends' house in Ottawa, without anyone at DTW batting an eyelid when I asked for the baggage to be sent on to Canada.
If your bag misconnects it's the airline's responsibility to get it to you wherever you are at the time they find it, as long as it doesn't cost them more than 1000 Special Drawing Rights to get it to you. If you happen to be 500 miles from your original arrival airport, regardless of how you got there, your bag will have to travel those 500 miles at the expense of the airline that should have delivered it to you at your original arrival airport (i.e., AF in the OP's case - not DL. Baggage delivery is the responsibility of the last airline). If an airline tries to tell you differently they are just wrong, and you should stand your ground and remind them of their obligations under the Montreal Convention.
I'm glad to hear that your baggage mishaps worked out well. I'd still be very surprised if any AF employee at the Berlin airport forwarded a bag to Croatia when it was not part of the original ticketed itinerary, and with a non-interlining airline. Maybe they would fly it back to Paris and put it on one of AF's flights into Zagreb. My fear is that if they tried something like this, it would take many days for the bag(s) to arrive in Croatia, possibly even arriving after the OP leaves.
In my situation above, my trip was a quick, long weekend trip and I didn't really have time to fool around and hope that the airline finally got around to delivering it. I'm sure they would have eventually; do the airlines have a certain number of days that they need to reunite you with your bags? As I said, there was absolutely no effort being made in BRU to move any of the bags that were piling up.
I would like to say that CDG has their you-know-what together, but it is the only other airport in Europe that I've had a baggage foul up (albeit a minor one). Picture this: A direct AF flight from Philadelphia to Paris. Easy, right? So I'm waiting at baggage claim, and no bag. I go to the baggage office and start a trace. I sit down for a few minutes. A lady comes out and says "Sir, Your bag was routed onto our afternoon flight to Bangalore, we're pulling it from the flight now". 30 minutes or so later, I've got my bag. As I suspected, the luggage tag said CDG in big letters.