Lost Luggage by New Zealand Airlines
 

Today NZ Air lost my luggage en route to the Rugby World Cup. It is a disaster because i have rare early product samples and all my warm clothes in that bag. I also have 6 rugby jerseys are in that luggage - the cost is pretty high. They offered me a mere NZ$100 in compensation if they can't return my bag to me. I just heard that 9 hours after arriving in Wellington, they still don't have my bag. I'm screwed! My whole trip to NZ is ruined and wasted.

Let this be a warning for anyone else out there who is traveling to NZ, rather choose a direct flight to an NZ destination that take NZ Air.

I am going to move this to the Air New Zealand forum, as you will meet more expert advise there.


Markie - Moderator, *A

Sorry to hear of your disruption.
I assume you mean Air New Zealand. What was your routing that the luggage got lost on?
This highlights the reason for good travel insurance when travelling internationally.

Sorry to hear about your apparent troubles.
Are you sure it's Air NZ that misplaced your bag? Were you on a non-stop NZ itinerary, or did you start somewhere with a different carrier?
Also, if your early product samples are so rare why were they in your checked baggage?
Given the apparent value of your samples, did you purchase travel insurance for the trip?
As a data point, airlines lose/misplace bags all the time due to a variety of factors. Despite your experience, I don't think it's indicative overall of Air NZ's service and don't see it as a warning not to use the carrier.

Welcome to FlyerTalk, and sorry about your loss.

Presumably, as an astute businessperson, you had backups of these singular items that could be FedExed to you and it will all turn out alright. Next time you may want to FedEx them, full stop (or carry them on).

Airlines lose baggage, and even more easily where there are connections; the last airline on your itinerary are the ones responsible, and you should read their Conditions of Carriage (usually on their website) and any information about local laws that might define what the airline's responsibility (as opposed to what they might offer you) - the $100 is certainly not acceptable lost baggage compensation, which is regulated by international convention. You can read more about the Warsaw Convention (as amended at The Hague and Montreal) here, with links to more extensive information.

Chill. We have more to see than rugby. Plus, I'm sitting here in a t-shirt, it's not that cold. :p

Air NZ are usually great. Sorry to hear you had troubles. Rest assured they will do everything they can to get your luggage to you. Just take some deep breaths, be nice to them, and try to enjoy our country. ^

I reckon I must have flown 1,000 sectors on Air NZ, and once a bag was 24 hours late.

They are about as good as it gets.

It might just be me but I'm always dubious about people coming on, posting for the first time, having a rant without actually putting much detail in there.

As for the last sentence, I'd imagine Air NZ are one of the most direct flights to any NZ destination.

I remember reading recently (I just wish I could remember where) that Air NZ's rate of lost baggage per 1000 passengers is around half the global average.

Never lost a thing in my hundreds of flights........OP just unlucky.

NZ Air sounds like that ghastly USAir...how could he have gotten the name so seriously wrong??

Have to agree. Have flown numerous NZ sectors and only lost a bag once. That was established to be the fault of Air Lingus rather than Air NZ.

As other posters have asked, did you have insurance?

Sounds like he flew (LAX/SFO)-AKL-WLG.

Under New Zealand Law, he would be required to collect his bag's on arrival at AKL. Then clear customs with his bags, once this is done he would have to re-check them at the Domestic Transfer.

One would asume he collected his baggage at AKL then re-checked it.

Therefore, if the bag was lost on the AKL-WLG sector (Domestic), he wouldn't be covered by the Warsaw Convention.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9650; en-GB) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.524 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

Like the others, I've flown a ton of NZ sectors and haven't had a bag lost. The only baggage incidents I can remember:

1. MEL-AKL during Christmas, they "lost" the container with all the priority tagged bags. We had to wait about an hour while they figured out where it had gone. When I received my bag I realised it had no baggage label on it at all, so I was impressed to have received it...

2. WLG-HLZ, bag turned up with no bag label on it.

(Note: in both of those cases, after some reflection, I couldn't remember the checkin agents ever putting the tag on - the only thing that seemed to have caused the routing was my old NZ*G tag with the FF# embossed on it, which presumably caused someone to check my itinerary and throw it on the right flights.

3. YOW-ORD-LAX-AKL-WLG. My bag misconnected in ORD, and NZ told me as soon as I landed in AKL, and told me they'd get it to me when it arrived on another flight. Very proactive and bag was delivered as promised about 20h late.

No, it's not just you who's in doubt.

Were the product samples an iphone12 or an ipad6 ?