nallison

Me too, in s America. It is done and doesn't seem to add any inconvenience. It is fairly criminal (pun intended) that many airports have totally open reclaim. This has always bothered me at airports where I have to queue a while at immigration, even a secure baggage area offers no protection against theft. On long distance buses in s America I know no one is getting my bag except me when I get off the bus, and the company accepts liability for that. It seems either BA/HAL must carry the same responsibility given the liability they accept when they take your bag? If they won't introduce checks that they deliver the bag to the person who placed it in their care, they are going to have to pay out some claims (which is probably cheaper than the staffing needed for checking).

Jagboi

I've come to that conclusion too. I have spent close to an hour in the "fast track". I usually pick a "marker person" who enters the regular line at the same time as I do and see who gets through faster. Too frequntly, it's the regular line that is faster.

Oaxaca

If the bag turned out to have been taken by a baggage handler, would BA then have liability?

Just wondering, I would agree that the path of least resistance for the OP would be to claim on insurance in the first instance, if they have any (I'm continually surprised by the number of people that don't). Of course, the best way to avoid this is to be HBO...

hbtr

Flawed logic. They are "moaning " that the immigration lines are so slow (or long) that even their bags arrived faster. Wanting both immigration and bag delivery to be faster is a reasonable desire.

hbtr

I suspect many people have trouble with bag identification. I recall a TV program in the U.S. that followed the operations of Southwest Airlines where a woman was complaining about a missing bag. A staff member approached with her bag and it was nothing like what she had described; she grabbed it and hurried away.

I had a bag go missing after an LHR-DFW flight once, only to have it show up at my final destination - which means someone had mistakenly taken it through customs and redeposited it. It all worked out, but I really wish airports would actually check tags.

flibbly

I think I've mentioned this on here before but it seems tangentially appropriate to mention it in this thread anyway.

I've never had a bag go missing, but I was once going through security at MAD (I think - it was certainly in Spain), and as I was travelling suited and booted I put all metal items in my jacket pocket and then put my jacket on the conveyor belt.

Unfortunately I must have been daydreaming as I proceeded to walk though the metal detector with my laptop bag in my hand . That obviously meant I had to go back through, and by the time I did my jacket was missing, and another vaguely similar one was left in its place.

That cost me car keys, house keys, mobile phone etc etc. By the time I'd paid for a (very long) taxi ride, repairs to my back door from where I'd had to break in, new phone etc it was a £1000+ cockup.

My jacket, complete with all the contents arrived in the mail about 3 months later from our Madrid office, who the airport had sent it to when the person who picked it up next went through the airport again and handed it in.

... Oh and the airport I always think is very dodgy for the chance of bags going missing from the carousel is LAX (domestic AA arrivals) - where the carousel is yards from the taxi rank though an automatic sliding door though which people can enter and leave at will.

techie

Since people are jumping on the bandwagon with their experiences, in my very frequent visits to Madrid, I do recall there often being a person by the exit after the baggage carousels in Barajas that would do spot checks of people's baggage tag affixed to the bag and the stub they have. They stopped me a couple of times, but it was nothing inconvenient and, in a way, I am glad they did.

P.S. The fact that Spanish baggage handlers take an age for the bags to arrive to the belt does mean that even the worst of queues in immigration are not an issue

bluemoon68

Good luck with claiming from the airline or HAL.

I had a suitcase that had definitely been opened and "inspected" to the extent that gifts had been unwrapped and opened and the contents of a jewellery box had luckily dropped out of the box and was found lose in the suitcase. Complaints led to the response that they were glad I had evidence that security was thorough!

EsherFlyer

I find the suggestions that insurance is the way forwards strange. Doesn't that mean you then have to declare the loss in the future when renewing insurance, with ongoing additional expense for increased policy costs?

My view is that BA have selected a level of service that makes commercial sense for all, but they should be insuring for losses that occur before bags are confirmed to be in hands of traveler. Not the traveller insuring that last bit. BA may choose to self-insure by simply covering costs themselves.

GUWonder

The airlines trying to frustrate baggage irregularity handling claims and drive such claims into the hands of customer-paid insurance policies is contributing to frustration by some police forces, as a lot of these insurance companies want a police report for lost/stolen claims. Thus the police are more busy doing administrative reports rather than doing the kind of police work that more directly interdicts criminal activity of greater concern to the communities. While airline baggage claims are a drop in the bucket, apparently for airlines it is not as they seem to be more than content with frustrating consumer complaints about baggage irregularity, even when such irregularity claims are made on the basis of the applicable treaty arrangements.

simons1

Yes, although in my experience it makes little difference to the premium. I had a bag missing/stolen on Oman Air 2 years back, I claimed about £1,600 and the premium went up by about £10.

Surely that is the purpose of insurance though. Why would I spend hours being given the runaround by BA when a single call to my insurer gets the job done immediately.

Armed with the PIR the insurer will claim part of it back from BA anyway, I would imagine there is some settlement methodology in place.

golfmad

It's not unreasonable for the insurance companies to want to see a police report for stolen goods. It's always been that way. There are a lot of 'chancers' out there.

Ldnn1

nallison, creampuff, do you recall the specific airports in S America / Asia where they do checks?

I believe you but as mentioned the only place I can personally recall seeing it is in Burma, but I mostly travel HBO. I went through several airports in Colombia with checked baggage last year but can't remember if they checked there.

It's absolutely standard practice on buses throughout those regions, for sure.

TabTraveller

Well I guess the point is that if my ski bag gets nicked there is probably around £5k worth of equipment in there. This is the only bag I ever check because it is simply impossible to carry in the cabin. No travel insurance will cover all of this cost. I have about as good insurance as I could find and it has a £500 single item limit and £3k overall. Which means I'd go to my householder insurer for the rest and then I am likely to have to pay increased premiums on my home insurance because I'll be marked as having suffered a theft. All because BA/HAL don't wish to pay for someone to check that the right person has left with the right bag...

I'd absolutely be claiming it in full from BA. I rather suspect a DJ would side with the consumer on this.

HIDDY

The only airport I've used here where a check was made to see if your receipt matched the bag tag was at AEP. Last time I arrived there they didn't do it though.