The merry-go-rounds of the luggage carousel

When a passenger is unreasonably delayed, airlines often have to pay European statutory compensation of €250/400/600. There should be similar statutory compensation for delayed baggage in order to encourage airlines to prevent these unacceptable delays. I would suggest €100 for each hour that the baggage is delayed beyond the arrival time of the flight.

Referring to Martin’s dreadful experience above and comments in another Conversation about last minute attempts by airlines to re-dispose lugage before take-off, it seems that the whole question of compliant hand-baggage being removed from passengers and transferred to the cargo hold needs critical examination. I am convinced that this because of lax control of over-sized hand-baggage that has been admitted to the passenger compartment. I hesitate to suggest additional paperwork, but in view of the exclusions in insurance policies there needs to be some sort of transfer note by which the airline accepts responsibility for the security of anything which they request or require passengers to hand over for hold storage. Insurers need to adapt their policies [including both travel and home contents policies where relevant] to reflect this risk. Ideally this action by airlines will be an extremely rare occurrence but if it seems likely to become routine then airlines need to provide a separate secure cage within the hold for such baggage and that cage should be transferred securely to the arrrival hall where passengers can collect its contents [in exchange for the original transfer note] rather than just be tipped out with the rest of the luggage onto the conveyer taking it to the reclaim carousel. It is a temptation to anyone dishonest in the baggage-handling crew, or even waiting at the carousel, to pick up a small piece of hand baggage that is likely to contain valuable items. To ease the security screening process I usually put my keys, coins, mobile phone, and other pocket items in a small bag inside my flight bag which I expect to keep on the plane under the seat in front of me; this is probably no longer a good idea. At the departure gate the airline staff are usually trying to get the pasengers on the plane a.q.a.p. in order to avoid delay penalties and I can imagine people being pressed to surrender their hand baggage without time to think much about the contents or without having any other quick and convenient way of carrying their fragile or valuable items onto the plane. Aparrt from anything else, the cargo hold is not maintained at cabin temperature and some items could suffer damage as a result of the chilling and reheating that occurs. I hope Martin has a successful outcome to his claim; if it goes to court I think there is a case for aggravated damages because of the persistent prevarication and repudiation of liability over a protracted period that SAS has compelled him to endure.

Well, the end of another year approaches and with it the anniversary of the incident. Also, I have a few days off in the UK to track down a ‘service address’ for SAS to which to send the County Court papers.

I spent an hour on the task today and found that the only postal address in the Airlines Directory was for their PR reps who happened to be contractors. When I called them I spoke to a reception / switchboard lady and was given an 0871 number to ring to speak to ‘customer services’ – which I politely refused to do since I have no intention of paying through the nose to be given the run around again.

The lady was rather brighter than SASs staff and, after asking me to outline the problem, seemed to realise that this adverse PR could have a serious negative effect. She then asked me to wait whilst she got advice from someone senior. She came back and told me that as it was the last working day before Christmas it would be difficult to achieve much immediately and would I accept the offer of a callback immediately after Christmas. Since she had showed some initiative and a lot of politeness I agreed and we will see what happens next!

In the meantime I have all the paperwork ready to nip down to the County Court.