Originally Posted by
brunos
I am not familiar with the airlines cost-sharing agreements. But my thinking was going the other way.
If you fly A-B-C with BA on first leg and XX on 2nd leg, it is XX which is responsible for your missing luggage in C. The bag could have been mishandled by BA and never got to B. Hence, BA is discharging liability on XX for the whole trip. But I am probably wrong if there is a liability sharing agreement.
The passenger is expected to claim from the last airline. But my understanding is that ultimate liability would normally rest with the airline under whose responsibility the bag was lost. Thus, if you fly A-B-C with airline X on A-B and airline Y on B-C and the bag never makes it to airline Y, airline Y would have a recursive action against airline X to claim the cost of indemnifying the passenger. Ditto with costs related to the rerouting of a delayed baggage. Whether airlines actually do cross-charge each other or whether they have decided that just bearing their own costs works just as well, I do not know.