Diarmaid

On 9th September 2023 I flew the following route :

DUB -> LHR (Aer Lingus)
LHR -> ICN (Asiana)
ICN -> KIX (Asiana)

I was supposed to self transfer at London Heathrow, because Aer Lingus and Asiana Airlines use different baggage companies.
However my baggage never arrived on the belt in London Heathrow.
The staff at the baggage inquiries desk advised me to proceed to my next flight and file a missing luggage claim with Aer Lingus.
When I arrived in Japan, I told the Asiana Airlines staff about my missing luggage.
My baggage was delivered 5 days later by a courier using cash on delivery, at the cost of 6030 yen (about 40 USD).
Asiana Airlines told me to claim it back from Aer Lingus.

So, I sent the courier receipts to Aer Lingus using the missing baggage case number, and they responded :
Can they just flat out refuse to pay even though it was their fault that my bags went missing? What are my rights here?

Thanks guys.

ROKNA

Aer Lingus does not have an interline or e-ticket agreement with Asiana so it looks like you have two tickets? Or a naughty travel agent who sold you something which looked like a single ticket but isn't

40 USD seems a very reasonable charge given Asiana had nothing to do with this issue and could have refused to carry the bags at all.

You do have a claim for expenses for 5 days for any reasonable costs incurred, but its unclear what's going on with your ticketing

trooper

The "self transfer" is a bit of a red flag. That is IIRC what companies like Kiwi call it when they ARE selling you TWO tickets.

Just out of curiosity I tried to construct a fare on ITA - DUB EI LHR OZ ICN OZ KIX... No result.

irishguy28

Can you share the name of the courier, please?

If, as I understand it, it cost only €40 to have this courier ship a bag from London to Japan, I would love to know this company so that I can do business with them!!!!! (That's far cheaper than the baggage fees on most airlines)

mccartje

I assumed that was just the fee from the airport in Japan to the accommodation.

Diarmaid

The ticket was booked through Booking.com, who gave me flights with reasonable times if I did a self transfer in London Heathrow.
Similar priced tickets would involve transiting through the Middle East from Ireland to Japan, and leaving super early morning, both of which I dislike.
Everything was fine going from Japan to Ireland - it was the return leg where my baggage didn't appear in Heathrow.

Asiana Airlines brought my bags from London to Osaka when they were found.
Yamato Transport brough my bags from Osaka airport to my residence.

Since Aer Lingus caused this whole situation, would they not be liable for the courier fees?

Diarmaid

Correct!

ROKNA

You created a self connection situation which removes all of the protections and rights you gain on a through ticketed itinerary under normal IATA/Chicago/Montreal conventions

There are two tickets so contract one was for travel from DUB to LHR. Between Aer Lingus and Asiana someone did you a major favour to get the bags to Japan at all.

Booking.com claim to protect you from issues which occur during self transfer

So you may have a claim on them but the wording only applies to missed flights

Diarmaid

According to the Asiana Airlines staff who assisted me on the Japan side, "You paid to have your bags shipped from LHR to KIX (Osaka) so we are simply fulfilling our end of the bargain".
Asiana were super nice to me.

Thank you for checking Booking.com's terms and conditions for me.
Sufficed to say I will be hesitant to agree to a self-transfer flight in the future after this debacle.

irishguy28

If a LHR to KIX ticket doesn't include shipping the bag from KIX to you, then by the same logic a completely separate Aer Lingus DUB to LHR ticket sure as hell doesn't include shipping the bag from KIX to you; Aer Lingus did their part (albeit delayed) and got your bag from DUB to LHR, which is the equivalent of what Asiana says is all that is required of them.

I would just cut my losses and, if you can't get Asiana to pay, just chalk it down to experience. You put yourself in a potentially dodgy position by booking separate tickets, and each airline can now (entirely legally) say each is blameless; the passenger themselves ends up holding the can for failures such as this.

Of course, if this had been a "real" single ticket, then there would be absolutely no doubt but that Asiana would be on the hook here (the "last" airline in the chain is the one left on the hook, even if they were not the ones to cause the baggage to be delayed in the first place).

Can you verify - your bag in DUB was tagged only as far as LHR, and you were then required to collect the bag, pull off the old Aer Lingus labels, and check it in with Asiana? Or, were you able to get it taggged all the way through to KIX at Dublin?

(I think you're actually incredibly lucky that you got your bag back at all, and with such relative ease, and that someone in LHR actually did retrieve your delayed bag, and hand it over to Asiana. I'd have expected the bag to go missing for days - or worse, to disappear completely. I genuinely don't think I would have had the stones to depart from LHR on that other ticket, as that - for me - would have been tantamount to admitting that I would never see my checked bag again)

FlightDetective

I agree with irishguy28 in the post above. Virtually every airline would wash their hands of it as soon as they realised you were doing a self-connect. Even so, as you said, the bag never arrived in London, so at best it would have been up to EI to send it to you - but they would have only been liable to send it back to where you started, or to a place in London as London, to them, was your final destination as it was separate tickets.

As you were doing a self-connect, that is all they would really be liable for, for not delivering the bag in London. Frankly I'd not waste anymore time on this and be grateful you got the bag and for a really low price. I think you were extremely lucky!
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Diarmaid

Thanks for the replies guys, I hit the 24hr post limit so couldn't reply before.

This is what I wanted to know most of all yeah. So legally I haven't got a leg to stand on. In that case I'll just suck it up and in future I'll think twice about arranging a self-transfer ticket.

Will do yeah, I won't waste any more time on it as you said. But thanks to you guys I think I can finally put my mind at ease that there's basically nothing else I can do.
Your input was all most valuable, thanks very much!

irishguy28

Enjoy Japan!!!

zkzkz

I think several things went weird here. The self-connect and Asiana are both kind of a red herring. If you fly from A-B and your bag doesn't arrive at B the standard response for major airlines is to deliver your bag to wherever you are. It's understood that if you're flying today you may be continuing your travels tomorrow or another day and that may be by planes, trains, automobiles, boats, whatever. There are places they might not be able to deliver to and they don't have a legal obligation to move heaven and earth but they definitely aren't only responsible for getting it to your immediate destination on their flight.

So I think -- in theory -- you shouldn't have gone to Asiana at all, you should have gone to Aer Lingus's handler in LHR and reported the bag lost there. You could have given them the Japanese address there and they should have delivered it to you there. Asiana shouldn't have been involved at all.

That said, you might not have had enough time to deal with this in LHR. It takes an annoyingly long time to deal with lost bags and the forms. If you didn't have an hour to comfortably deal with it you probably did the only thing you could have done. And it's probably not worth fighting for that amount of money. Just count yourself lucky the bag arrived before you left Japan ...