In the past 24 hours we flew HKG - AMS (Cathay J booking) and then AMS - LIS (KLM Y booking). In HKG Cathay checked our bag through to LIS.

I checked in the lounge in AMS and also at the gate in AMS and was told the bag was in AMS and would be loaded onto the flight to LIS. Well, we arrived in LIS just now and the bag didn't arrive. Spoke to the third party ground handlers who said they have "no clue" about it and logged a missing bag request.

I understand how these systems work and the missing bag request is quite passive, ie, needs someone to manually associate the bag with the missing reference. I tried calling Cathay and KLM to ask if someone was able to track the last known location of the bag and was told we just had to wait for the online system to update (surely in their systems they can see where it was last scanned).

My friend is deeply upset about the experience and I guess am looking for advice on how to chase this up most effectively. Do not fly KLM often but have SkyTeam Elite Plus status.