I was looking to the Flyertalk community to provide some guidance on when my bag stops being considered "delayed" and is instead considered "lost". How long do you typically give before filing a claim via travel insurance and also for seeking compensation from the airline?

For me, it will depend on where I started the trip and where I ended it (departure and destination points). For domestic flights I will give it 2 days maximum, for international 4-5 days maximum. However, if there were irregular ops (such as the snow storm in the northeast lately, in which many flights were cancelled) I would give it a day or two more.

If it is beyond said number of days and I don't have my bag I would file a claim with the travel insurance company (if I have one for the trip) and with the airline. Also, if the airline cannot find the bag in the airine's system or the bag has not been delivered by said number of days I would consider it lost.

I've been told that for domestic flights, barring any bad weather, a delayed bag will usually arrive within 24 hours, and I've always found that to be true. If it's been sent to the wrong location or missed it's flight, they can usually get it to it's correct destination the next day. If not, then it may indicate that the airline doesn't know where it is. That's when I consider it lost.

Steve

There are certain flights (think turboprop) where baggage space can be at a recurring premium. When I worked for UAX, we really had the wrong equipment for our IAD-JFK run. There were always too many bags for every flight, and therefore, we couldn't really roll them onto the proverbial next flight. We ran the CRJ to LGA (as opposed to the J41 to JFK) and the mainline LGA staffed used to get so pissed at us that they'd stop forwarding the bags we send there instead. It got so bad, we ended up putting all of the bags in a bunch of LD-3's (widebody cargo cans) and shipping them to LAX to get sent on another widebody to JFK.

FWIW, once a bag becomes separated from you, the "rush" sticker they put on there is a misnomer. It's the absolute last thing loaded onto the plane.