Originally Posted by
golfmad
It's not unreasonable for the insurance companies to want to see a police report for stolen goods. It's always been that way. There are a lot of 'chancers' out there.
For the airlines, much like for the insurance companies, it's about frustrating claims; with the airlines, the frustration of claims is done by not responding and/or by demanding all sorts of elements that may or may not be unreasonable but which are certainly not required under the applicable treaties for irregular baggage handling.
Maybe it is or is not unreasonable to demand that customers jump through additional hoops to get their just due, but these demands for police reports eat up police resources that could be used for other (read: crime-interdiction) purposes than playing desk job jockey for civil claims.
And it's not like most potential baggage-related claims against airlines are even pursued by customers -- a situation which just leads to consumers eating the losses for which the airlines should be paying and the airlines carrying on as usual without really systematically fixing anything other than a system by which to frustrate valid customer claims.