meechyathere

This I believe was the cause of much of much of this. I didn't realize bags were supposed to be held in a special area until the passenger clears CBP, but that would make perfect sense.

Fare is AY, also sold by BA, but Not AA. I assume this means it's not JV?

They're definitely AA staff. The station manager did indeed blame YUL, arguing that they take no responsibility for baggage issues.
Rebooking was on 105 stock. GAs were able to rebook me on the same YUL-JFK at 2:17pm the next day and print a boarding pass, but no further. They claimed AY had control over the ticket.

Another wrinkle:
After the departure of AY006 that evening, the new AY flights appeared in my itinerary. It was also shortly after an AYgent entered those segments and said (in a taunting voice): "I have a new itinerary for you! Now ALL you have to do is pay a fare difference of [several thousand $] and change fee of ~$550. Easy!"

At 1:35pm the next day, shortly before boarding, I got a cryptic DM on twitter saying that "the offered change cannot be *promised* without charge" / "Unfortunately reissue without charge is not an option."
(This got me thinking, was I maybe on standby? Is that a thing on AY? It could have also been language barrier.)

At no point was YUL able to print passes for the AY flights or check my bags through to SIN, nor could I check in online. However, I was assigned seats and printed passes and bag tags for both at JFK.

atsak

Something similar happened to me in YYZ. I was flagged at GE and the US CBP agent advised me my bag had failed uptake (what?); there was no picture of it on their screen she showed me. She directed me to the United luggage counter that was inside a transit area in T1 down the hall. I went to see United and repeated what she had told me. She checked and said well it's just appeared a minute ago, try again. I waved at the agent who sent me down the hall, she checked again, and off I went.

My experience was decidedly less problematic than yours, but I only wanted to provide a data point that it occurred similarly to me that luggage went missing between check in and customs.

seawolf

From what I’ve seen with transatlantic, JV fares would indicate valid on AA/BA/AY/IB. As the itinerary is to Asia, I’ll be surprised if it is covered by JV as that would mean AA published a North America to South East Asia fare routing transatlantic instead of transpacific. Not that it is impossible but surprising.

My understanding is pre clearance baggage is suppose to be held until cleared. At CBP inspection, your BP is scanned which will bring up images of any checked baggage. CBP will ask you to confirm if those are your bags and then decide if they want to inspect or not.

Steve M

Who caused the problem and who's responsible to the passenger are two separate matters. Just because it was airport personnel or a contractor that caused the issue and not AA personnel doesn't automatically mean that AA isn't responsible to the passenger. Consider the case of multi-carrier checked baggage: the final carrier is responsible to the passenger to deal with any loss or damage, regardless of which carrier caused the problem.

meechyathere

Absolutely! I had one flight where my suitcase was left open by TSA, and items missing and damaged, and the AA guy in Boston said "Well they did it, but we're responsible for your items and we'll reimburse you," and all was resolved in a few days.

In this case though, I suggested to the station manager that he deal with me first, then take it up with the ground contractor but was told: "That's not how it works" and essentially to pound sand.