Princess Cruiser

The top of the luggage belt on Southwest carousel number four in Tulsa is a luggage destroyer. The top of that carousel belt ate my TSA lock and completely ripped off my bag zipper pull tab. SW Tulsa bag agent says too bad, so sad. She says that SW doesn't cover ripped off zippers, zipper pull tabs or broken off wheels. SW Tulsa bag agent says "I saw it happen to your bag and I've seen this happen to bags all the time." She doubts that the airport will pay anything for bags that were observed by eye witnesses being damaged while transiting on the airport conveyor system..

Tchiowa

The airline is responsible.

Yoshi212

Not that it resolves the situation but also check the credit card you used (if you did use one) to purchase the ticket to see if there is any coverage. If the airline refuses to pay at least maybe you'd be made whole.

invisible

On global scale - depends on country/jurisdiction. Here in Asia good luck getting any compensation from airport/airline. This is the reason why locals always buy travel insurance.

tev9999

I had always understood that zippers, along with wheels, handles, etc. were not covered - but apparently the DOT disagrees and notified airlines back in December they must cover this type of damage.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...204-story.html

I would go back and escalate with Southwest.

Princess Cruiser

I went back to the SW bags office and made a final appeal to a different SW bag agent. That agent was fully aware that the TUL conveyor belt four has a gap at the top of the lift causing bags to repeatedly jam. She said that the Tulsa airport authority is aware of the cause of the jamming and had failed to fix it. During our conversation she somehow "remembered" that SW had changed their bag policy based on a government directive. Her memory was no doubt freshened by a SW audit of the Tulsa bag office the previous day. She admitted that SW was fully responsible and gave me a brand new bag as a replacement.

BTW: I only just noticed today that the carousel has emergency shutdown buttons at several points below the carousel at floor level. That's good to know since I've seen kids sitting on the moving part of carousel before it starts. The Tulsa carousels have painted yellow keep back lines around the carousels but some folks ignore the warning.

Kagehitokiri

impressive, and good to hear

airline and samsonite didnt care when they broke off wheel and ripped pocket half off on first trip with that piece of luggage, so i started buying briggs & riley, have had one free repair with local shop so far

SMART51

Was on a flight RUH-DOH-KUL on QR and my luggage arrived in terrible shapr, QR replaced both of them in KUL, with identical luggage (2) and delivered them to hotel.

quan98

AA baggage agent at DFW told me to pound sand on my old Kirkland Signature bag which had three damaged zipper pulls and was dirty like something oily had ran over it. I was only gold or platinum and don't know whether that'd make a difference. Probably too late to escalate now esp. since I replaced the critical one and just use zip ties on the others. Got too many miles on it to even consider seeing if Costco would replace.

Good to know airline is responsible. Thanks!

Doc Savage

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/south...y-luggage.html

IanFromHKG

Funny, my experience is that Asian airlines (especially Cathay) are extremely good at dealing with luggage damage. On every single complaint, I have had my luggage repaired without question (I should add - collected from my home, repaired, and delivered back to my home, all with no charge), or cash compensation sufficient to purchase a replacement. Admittedly I am a Marco Polo member, but I don't think my experience is unusual.

weero

I always and without exception had my bags fixed by a professional within 72 hours or replaced at 100% new value here in Asia.

Now in Australia or Europe ... that is a whole different story ....

gobluetwo

Probably depends on the airline. Cathay, Singapore, Asiana and others might be much better than the Chinese (to generalize) or smaller or budget carriers in the region.

Gringa

Thanks so much for posting this. AA knocked off a wheel on a brand new suitcase & with great glee (it seemed like) said they're not responsible. Luckily, the department store where I bought it replaced it with no problem. If they do it again, I've got some ammunition if they try to deny.

mmff

My experience with damaged luggage is (fortunately) limited but when it happened to me at FRA (or on the way to FRA) LH service was stellar.

They gave me a new bag of the same brand and model right there and then, and refunded the value of the destroyed shirts later on. Granted, it was a not-that-expensive Delsey bag but it was still nice to have the issue solved promptly at the airport.