Delayed baggage with Buddy pass
 

Hi guys my first time using a buddy pass for AA ,unfortunately my bags were lost for about 6 days while I was on my trip to the states coming from Canada . While I was in the states for the Christmas holidays I was with out my personal stiff . I has inform by the air line that I should purchase personal stuff and I will be reemburse for my new stuff until I receive my bags , now I'm wondering if I'm still going to get a refund when I send in my info with my receipts and they will see that it's a buddy pass that I didn't pay for my bags even tho it wasn't my fault that they had lost my bags
I need some advoice please

You are not eligible
 

Space available customers are not eligible for interim expenses related to baggage delays.

If this is an international flight where the Montreal Convention applies, AA cannot choose to exempt itself from its regulations

Those regulations have an exception for these type of tickets. All relevant governing body regulations also have exceptions for passengers not on paid (including award) confirmed tickets.

From looking through, I cannot see where the Montreal Convention has any such exception; which article has the exception?

These are not confirmed tickets. As such the regulations in general don't apply. Ino such case your luggage is never conformed on the flight. It may not even fly on the same flight as you since the luggage is standby after all other luggage/cargo.

There is nothing in the convention that refers to such carriage as being exempt that I can see. There are only 2 specific exemptions that I can see. Can you just point out where this exemption to the convention applies. By the time the passenger boards , then the passenger is confirmed on the flight

The only one I can see is

There are aspects in the convention that prohibit a carrier from creating rules that conflict with the convention; I may have missed the relevant article , but cannot see one where a special fare such as a buddy pass is exempt

If it was a claim for something like EC261/2004 , I can see that such fares are exempted there, but in this nigh on global convention , I cannot see it, though I may have missed a clause in an article, so if can point it out, would be useful to know. Searching the document , I cannot even find the use of the word ticket

It does start

Not to flame the OP but under current circumstances I don't know why anybody would ever fly D3 "buddy pass" anymore. The cost for roundtrip flights from Canada to the States with one connection is pretty expensive. As a D3 you are bottom of the barrel on priority and stand a very good chance of not making flights and all the associated costs with that. I really don't get the appeal given that Y class fares are quite reasonable with some planning. And then you have the example of the OP where your bags go astray.

Are you really suggesting that the bags have gone astray due to the use of a buddy pass?

The fare when the person was booking may well have been better than a normal fare - what the best case is may not apply to what the situation was at time of booking

Um, no. My point in the last sentence was simply to point out that should your bag go missing while on space available travel AA is not going to reimburse you for incidental expenses.

What I'm saying is that the perceived cost savings from "free" buddy passes is just an illusion when you add in the cost of waiting standby, possibly having to make multiple trips to the airport on multiple days or worse, purchase a hotel room, rental car, return one way ticket, etc.

As I said, with a 1 connection routing the round trip cost of D3 buddy pass is quite high. The employee could be charged nearly as much as a paid ticket would be for a cross border itinerary such as this; nothing free about it. Even if a purchased ticket were double the amount it would still be cheaper in my eyes. D3 travel is the pits.

no one has indicated any exemption under the convention, that allows AA to choose not to be liable; for domestic travel, it can do what it pleases to a grest extent

In fact the airline agent has even stated to the passenger that it will pay up

+1. I am very familiar with the Montreal Convention and cannot conceive of a way out of liability for this.

Because it is specifically stated in the Employee Travel Guide that you have to agree to abide by when you the buddy pass is issued...

See page 15:
http://c.hub.aa.com/documents/Travel_Guide_v6.pdf

The provisions of law override any conditions that the airline may wish to try to introduce

Article 26 — Invalidity of Contractual Provisions
Any provision tending to relieve the carrier of liability
or to fix a lower limit than that which is laid down in this
Convention shall be null and void, but the nullity of any
such provision does not involve the nullity of the whole
contract, which shall remain subject to the provisions of this
Convention.

I don't see that it would be any different to where AA tries to invalidly disclaim responsibility for handles/wheels and similar

I won't begin to debate the nitty gritty of "international conventions" and the like. I do know that if I were an AA employee (I am not) who gave someone a D3 "buddy pass" and had this happen I would not be very happy if they raised a fuss. If the OP pursues this to the point of contention the employee will be the one who suffers, all "conventions" aside.