royal757

I recently lost my luggage (10 days ago) while traveling from NCE - CDG - YUL. I've opened a case with Air France from day 1, and no one is able to even tell me where it was last seen. Air France keep telling me to check back later .. but every day no news. I am confused as to how there is no trace of it, absolutely none. They can't even tell me if it was loaded in the belly of my first flight or not.

Anyways, I keep calling every two days and I am told "we have no trace, it's probably lost forever but wait 21 days to claim full compensation". I am uterly shocked by this answer.

What confuses me even more is that in these Covid times, almost no one travels. My flight was 90% empty and CDG and NCE that day had very very few passengers.

Statistically speaking, the more someone waits to receive his luggage, the more the probabilities of never finding it get higher.

Any course of avenue I should take after almost two weeks? I'm loosing hope, and had hard to replace content in it.

I've already opened a case with them and described exactly how the luggage looks and what is in it (to the best of my knowledge).

Mwenenzi

Have you got a world tracer reference?
https://wtrweb.worldtracer.aero/WTRI...6-E443E304CFB5

https://www.mybag.aero/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldTracer

royal757

yes of course, that's the first thing I got. It still says "tracing continues"
And I had to fill in the contents of my luggage last week.

Ditto

I'm not entirely sure I understand what your expectations are when you say "AF doesn't care"
When you bag is delayed typically AF will cover some expenses of you buying essential items in the first few days, this may also differ whether you are returning to your home or flying away.

Bags gets lost, the amount of passengers travelling is irrelevant, and if your bag was somehow misplaced in NCE then there will be no record of where it is.
According to the Montreal convention your luggage is considered to be "delayed" for the first 21 days after which it is considered to be "lost" and then the airline will compensate you up to 1131 SDRs (~€950) for the lost luggage.
If you have any travel insurance, they might cover anything extra that the airline doesn't cover, in case your bag content was higher than that or any possible expenses for essential items not covered by the airline.

Often1

AF is a corporation. It neither cares nor does not care. Ascribing human emotions to it will only frustrate you.

The best thing to do when your luggage does not show up is to keep checking WorldTracer. When you call AF, nobody at AF sees anything other than what you see in WorldTracer and thus, it serves no purpose to call.

Indeed, nobody is looking for your bag. What happens is that sooner or later your bag shows up where it should not, someone scans the tag (or opens the bag and finds your backup ID) and matches it to your case. On rare occasions, the bag has been stolen or destroyed and will never show up.

Under the Montreal Convention, your bag is considered lost after the 20th day. At that point, you are due reimbursement of the fair market value (not replacement value) of the bag and its contents up to approximately EUR 1,340. You are also entitled to have necessary interim expenses reimbursed, but those reimbursements are deducted from the EUR 1,340.\

Depending on your bag and its contents, if the EUR 1,340 will suffice, this should all be a non-issue. If you travel with more valuable items, it is always important to keep those items in your carry-on luggage and to have travel insurance appropriate to your needs.

In the meantime, I would do nothing other than check WorldTracer once per day.

irishguy28

There's no point calling. You have the Worldtracer link, and you can see exactly what the person on the phone can see.

There is no parallel channel where different information on the status of your bag is kept; there is no other way for anyone to obtain information on the whereabouts of your bag, unless it is located somewhere and its details are reported to Worldtracer.

I'm not sure that the number of travellers/bags correlates to the likelihood of a bag going missing to the extent that you seem to think.

Any bag can get misplaced, fall off a conveyor, fall out of a bin, end up in the wrong bin, have its label torn off, or in any other way come to some mischief. It is not primarily the sheer volume of bags handled that, in normal times, accounts for the fact that any bag goes missing.

With fewer bags travelling, fewer bags will go missing. But it's not exactly as if there is some magic number of bags going into the system that, if this number is not reached, it can be guaranteed that no bag gets lost or misplaced.

durberville

Not entirely correct. First, the SDR limits were raised in December 2019 to 1,288 for delayed and lost luggage per scheduled increase. So around €1550.

Second, a passenger may claim separately for delayed and lost luggage. That it, you can be compensated up to 1,288 SDR for the replacement of items necessary during the period of delay. On the 21st day, your luggage is deemed loss and a second form of compensation is owed for the value of things lost up to 1,288 SDR.

Often1

The maximum liability limits under the Convention indeed include both interim reimbursements and the fair market value of the lost / damaged bag & contents.

brunos

I hope that you have a form of identification in/on your luggage besides the airline tag.
It does happen (very rarely) that this tag gets ripped off,. Then the only way to identify the bag is if you have your own tag. I usually put an A4 page at the top of my belongings with all my details, besides a name tag on the handle with contact details of FFP.

If your bag is truly lost or stolen, then you will have to provide a maximum of receipts for things of value. Get to work in assembling them. In my experience, AF is usually accommodating but won't fork over EUR1,000 without some proofs.

But keep hoping, there is still a chance of recovering.

Often1

I include a printed copy of my itinerary with my name, email & mobile number (including country code) in large bold marking.

drvannostren

As a baggage handler I'm sure this can be frustrating but as others have said it's not necessarily that they don't care. If they have no info, they have no info.

If they can't tell you ANYTHING, then my best guess with experience is that it never left Nice. I'm not sure about AF scanning practices but most airlines scan bags, for this exact purpose. Domestic flights get scanned less, but internationally the scanning is pretty good.

Bag goes down the belt toward the bagroom, at this point it should've ended up on the right pier. Unless the tag got torn off, possible, but doesn't happen that often. Also, I would hope you didn't have an old bag tag still on it, or any of those little stickers that get placed elsewhere on the bag that people love to collect. Those things trip up the scanning systems.

So if we assume you got past all that, it made it to the correct bagroom belt on time and would've been taken out to the flight. Would've been scanned in the bagroom and then maybe or maybe not scanned onto the aircraft, again scanning practices on domestic flights aren't as frequent, but almost everything gets scanned in bagrooms.

If they literally can't tell you ANYTHING, I'd suggest that bag never made it down to the bagroom. Because at the very least there'd be a scan of your bag being "loaded into Baggage cart (narrowbody) or can (widebody) AKE123456AF" or whatever. They might not offer that info up to you, but I'd think that they'd have it. If it didn't get scanned in bagroom and didn't get scanned on a domestic flight, that widens your search. But there's VERY LITTLE chance that a TATL flight had bags going unscanned. I mean one bag here or there maybe, nothing is 100% accurate, but it's close.

Long story short, I don't have any specific great advice for you. But I'd specifically search Nice, maybe call AF directly at that airport, or even call the airport lost and found (they're unlikely to be able to help, but can't hurt) If your bag dropped into a bagroom with no tag and no airline tag, I can promise you, NO ONE will take responsibility for it. When I've got free time at work I do try and help things like this along, I've personally called passengers before to find out at least what airline they flew so I could get the bag into hands of the people who should have it. But beyond that, no one wants to deal with something they aren't sure is theirs. Now, if your bag is distinct, has that A4 paper inside as you've said and is in Nice, someone from lost and found might be able to just go for a little walk and find it. Your absolute best bet would be to know someone at NCE airport that could go look for it lol, that's a real long shot, but if your bag ever gets lost at YVR get ahold of me and I'll have a look around

royal757

Thanks this is eye opening.
Thought, I did not have any of the little stickers you mentioned. I always remove them. And this was a brand ne duffle bag, all black with a big Marking on it. I did not have an A4 paper with my contact info in it as others have mentioned ... oh well I should do that from now on. Nor did I have a tag with my contact info on it.

Upon my 5th call with Air France they sent an internal mail to NCE and NCE answered that the luggage was loaded in the belly of the A319 that did NCE-CDG. So so far we can assume it is at CDG, which is ... a huge airport.

I gave all the details regarding the size, distinct markings, and the content of my luggage to AF but I just feel like no one is actually looking for it. Just "if it appears then we'll call him, otherwise we don'T look for lost stuff" that's the sentiment I have.

Until now, they have not re-imbursed any of my claims for necessities.

I was told in Paris all lost luggage goes to "Le Kube" .. can't get more information.

Is it possible my luggage is still in the belly of that A319 and never unloaded? Doubtful right? I'm just stunned, it is my first time losing a luggage for more than 24 hours. I fly on average 60 flights a year, Covid got me down to 20 a year.

I keep checking everyday that worldtracer, without any hope. Air France just tells me to wait the 21th day "as protocol" but they make it sound like as if they know it will never be found, but just for the heck of it wait a few more weeks for .. no help.

Goldorak

Yes, they all go to Le Kube in CDG. Very impressive facility, I had the chance to visit it once. They have also a few staff who are in charge of unidentified bags (the ones that have lost their tag). They open them and use the description of the content you have entered into Worldtracer to make a match.
Your bag is surely not anymore in the A319 belly. It may has been left hereriginalky, but since that this plane has made a lot of other flights, so your bag would have been discovered. I believe it is somewhere in CDG and I am guessing that, with the current crisis, they have less people able to handle the lost bags and perform the searches. It will show up at one point, but when...

johan rebel

Yeah, right!

I go to extreme lengths to avoid checking bags. My success rate is not far from 100%, I end up with bags in the hold about once a decade on average. Nevertheless, I've had bags go astray.

Last time that happened I was flying international F, and despite the bags having been adorned at check-in with the largest dayglo priority tags I've ever seen, they didn't make it onto the second of three flights. This much I was told at the lost luggage desk at my arrival airport. Also, that the bags had been loaded on a subsequent flight and had already arrived at FRA, my second and last transfer point. They would now be sent on the next flight from there, would I mind waiting a couple of hours for them? As I had a taxi waiting to take me on a 200+ km ride home, the answer was no. Good thing I didn't wait, because of course the bags did not arrive on the next flight.

Now calling can be a real pain. You need to find the right phone number, hope that somebody will actually answer the phone, and then be lucky enough to get somebody on the line who is willing to help, not just go through the motions. Plenty of time and even more patience are essential, and a big dollop of luck really helps too. In this instance I put in the time and was willing to have my patience sorely tried, because I had another flight in a few days time and needed to take delivery of the bags before then.

Long story short, the bags were couriered to my doorstep within 48 hours. Not bad, given that they had to travel a considerable distance, and from one country to another. After I had taken delivery, Worldtracer was still telling me that my bags were in FRA, as it had been saying all along. For all I know, it still is.

So am I going to rely on Worldtracer as a fount of wisdom and my sole source of information? No way. Instead of sitting back and waiting for miracles to happen I prefer to do what I can to move things along.

I would only recommend passivity to those who don't give two hoots about their bags and their contents; who will cheerfully wait around for days or weeks for them to be delivered at the airline's conveniece; or who are happy to wait for monetary compensation in lieu of getting their belongings back.

To the OP: I hope you will be reunited with your bags. Don't give up hope.

Johan

Often1

What you experienced is the norm. The vast majority of bags pop up somewhere and are routed to your current destination. You should even be able to go into WorldTracer and change your location should that become necessary.

Whether you push the carrier or not, the reality is that if the bag is truly lost, stolen or severely damaged, there is nothing to be done and the way one finds out is through the passage of time.