jsloan

Because the responsibility for the baggage is tied to the journey, not to any individual flight segment (or operating carrier)

Whether you recheck the bags is immaterial. Including that sort of trivia in the law would just serve to create grey areas and loopholes.

Feel free to spend a quarter of a million in legal fees to try to get an extra $2K in compensation.

There's absolutely no doubt about it. I also checked before I posted.

Now, the DOT could conceivably require that US carriers meet the US liability limits to the extent that they're greater than the Montreal Convention limits. They could not require that international carriers comply, of course. The DOT does not do this, presumably because US carriers have lobbied against it in the name of a level playing field.

The treaty is written the way that it is in order to be unambiguous. They didn't want weird corner cases -- for example, they wanted to make sure that a bag lost on a flight to the US is covered no matter if it's covered at the origin, at a connecting point, or at the destination. To try to apply the rule your way would be to invite endless fighting over where an incident occurred. You're focused on inbound travel, but what if you'd flown from Shanghai to Beijing to the US? Would you want to argue with United about whether the bag was lost in Shanghai, in Beijing by Air China, or in Beijing by UA? Why should it matter?

It's not working out in your favor this time, but there's really no question about the rule. Sorry; I hope UA finds your stuff.