What to do when an airline loses your luggage

The first 30 minutes: file before you leave the terminal

The single most important thing you can do is report the missing bag in person, at the airline’s baggage services desk in arrivals, before you leave the airport. You’re looking for a Property Irregularity Report — the PIR. Every system that follows uses the file reference it generates. Without that reference, every subsequent conversation starts from zero.

Walk back into the arrivals hall and look for a sign saying “Baggage Services”, “Lost Baggage”, “Baggage Tracing” or your airline’s name plus “Baggage”. At larger airports each airline (or its ground handler) runs its own desk — there isn’t a central lost-bag office. Stay landside; once you leave through the customs line you can’t go back through immigration.

Bring with you: your boarding pass, the bag-tag stub stapled to it at check-in, your passport, and as much detail about the bag as you can muster — brand, colour, size, distinctive marks, contents of the outer pocket. If you took a photograph of the bag before flying, show it. Photographs help more than verbal descriptions and they short-circuit a lot of follow-up emails.

Walk away with three things: a written file reference (typically formatted like JFKAA12345— airport code, airline code, numeric ID), a copy of the PIR on paper or by email, and a confirmed delivery address. If you’re staying at a hotel, give the hotel address — not your home — and make sure the airline notes the booking name if it differs from yours.

Hour-by-hour for the first 24 hours

Hour 0–1: file the PIR

At the desk. Get the file reference. Get a copy of the PIR. Confirm the delivery address. Don’t skip this step even if there’s a queue and you’re shattered.

Hour 1–3: buy reasonable essentials

Underwear, toiletries, a clean shirt, anything you genuinely need to function for the next 24 hours. Keep every receipt with the date stamp visible. Don’t wait for the airline to authorise the spend in advance — reasonable purchases are reimbursable retroactively under the Montreal Convention. Buy what you need, not what you fancy.

Hour 3–12: check the tracker, don’t panic

Most legacy carriers feed their bag-tracking pages from the WorldTracer system. The airline’s own “delayed bag” or “baggage status” page will show statuses like “Reported”, “Tracing”, “Located”, “Forwarded” and “Delivered”. Refresh every few hours. Don’t ring the call centre yet — nothing will have moved, and you’ll waste time you’ll need later.

Hour 12–24: phone in

If the tracker hasn’t reached “Located” after 24 hours, call the baggage services number on the PIR paperwork. Have the file reference ready. Ask politely whether the bag has been scanned anywhere in the airline’s network and re-confirm the delivery address. If you’ve had to change hotels, update them immediately.

Day 2–7: escalation

If the bag is still not located after 48 hours, ask the airline to escalate to its central tracing team rather than the local desk. The local desk searches the airport you’re at; central tracing searches the network. Most genuinely missing bags are sitting at a hub airport on the wrong side of a connection, not at your arrival airport.

Around the same time, contact your travel insurer. Most policies have a 21-day window for delayed-luggage interim costs and a separate process for fully lost bags. Insurers want a copy of the PIR and your itemised receipts. You don’t need to wait for the airline to admit the bag is lost — the insurer’s delayed-luggage cover usually kicks in earlier.

At day 5, the bag is “significantly delayed” in airline parlance. Many airlines treat this as the trigger for higher-tier interim expenses and proactive compensation. Push for it. After 21 days the bag is reclassified as lost, and a different set of rules — covered below — applies.

Keep everything in writing from this point on. Email summaries of every phone call back to the airline’s baggage services address with the file reference in the subject line. If you ever end up arguing with a claims handler six months later, the email trail is what wins.

Your compensation rights

The framework you care about is the Montreal Convention, which governs liability on international flights and is incorporated into UK and EU domestic law. UK261 and EU261 are the better-known passenger-rights regulations — but those apply to flight delays and cancellations, not directly to baggage. The airlines administer both, which is where the confusion comes from.

In practice, under Montreal:

• Delayed bag— the airline reimburses reasonable interim expenses up to a per-passenger cap currently set at 1,288 Special Drawing Rights(roughly £1,300 / $1,700 depending on that day’s SDR rate). You need receipts. There’s no fixed daily limit in the convention itself.
• Lost bag(after 21 days) — you can claim the depreciated value of the contents up to the same Montreal cap. Original receipts for the items themselves strengthen the claim significantly.
• Damaged bag— report damage within 7 days of receiving the bag back. The airline either repairs the bag or compensates for it, again subject to the Montreal cap.

The cap is per passenger, not per bag — if a couple lose two suitcases between them, that’s two caps available. Travel insurance usually covers more than the airline does and often picks up items the airline excludes, so most people end up recovering more by claiming from both. Confirm current SDR limits and any applicable regional rules with the regulator (the UK CAA, the US DOT, your national equivalent) before quoting them in a formal complaint.

The most common mistakes

The mistakes that cost people money are almost always the same handful, in roughly this order:

• Leaving the terminal without filing a PIR. This is the big one. Filing later, by phone, weakens the claim because the airline’s default assumption becomes that the bag arrived and you collected it. Don’t leave without a written file reference.
• Not keeping receipts.Verbal estimates of what you spent are worth roughly nothing to a claims handler. Photograph or scan each receipt the day you get it. Email them to yourself for safekeeping. Sweaty paper receipts at the bottom of a bag don’t survive.
• Filing too late.Damaged-bag claims have a 7-day window. Delayed-bag interim claims usually require notice within 21 days. Lost-bag formal claims are technically open up to 2 years from arrival, but evidence gets harder as time passes. File early even if you don’t have all the figures yet — you can supplement later.
• Only filing one claim.Travel insurance and the airline are separate, parallel processes. Insurers deduct what the airline pays so you’re not double-claiming, but combined cover almost always exceeds either alone — and travel insurance often picks up items the airline excludes.
• Letting the call centre run the timeline. If you’re being told to call back tomorrow, by tomorrow, by tomorrow, move it to writing. Email the airline’s baggage services address with the file reference. After 8 weeks of unresolved complaint, UK passengers can escalate to the CAA’s Air Passenger Rights team or an alternative dispute-resolution body the airline subscribes to; US passengers can file with the DOT.

How to claim from travel insurance and the airline simultaneously

You file both, you tell each that the other exists, and you let the insurer settle up afterwards. The pattern is roughly:

• Day 0–1.Open the airline claim with the PIR. Open a delayed-baggage claim with your travel insurer — most insurers have a delayed-luggage benefit that triggers after a certain number of hours (often 12 or 24) and pays a per-day allowance against receipts.
• Day 2–7.Submit interim receipts to both. Tell each that you’re also claiming from the other. The insurer will ask you to forward the airline’s acknowledgement and any payments.
• Day 21+. If the bag is officially lost, file a contents claim with the airline (depreciated value, capped at the Montreal limit) and a separate lost-baggage claim with the insurer (often higher cap, with sub-limits per item category).
• Final settlement.The insurer subtracts what the airline paid and tops up to its own policy limits. You provide the airline’s payment letter as evidence. Done.

Read your policy excess and per-item sub-limits before assuming a high-value item is fully covered. Most travel insurance policies cap individual items (laptops, cameras, jewellery) at a level lower than their replacement cost unless you specifically declared and paid for higher-value cover at purchase.

FAQ

What if I’ve already left the airport without filing a report?

Go back to the airport baggage services desk if you reasonably can. If you can’t, phone the airline immediately, get a file reference over the phone, and follow it up in writing the same day. Filing late doesn’t kill the claim outright but it weakens it — the airline’s default position will be that the bag arrived and you collected it. The earlier you file, the more credible everything that follows.

How much can I spend on essentials?

There’s no universal cap, but in practice airlines and insurers reimburse “reasonable” interim purchases — underwear, toiletries, a clean shirt, a basic outfit if you have a meeting. A rough working benchmark is around £100 / $130 per day, more if you can justify it. Keep every receipt with the date visible. Don’t buy designer replacements for items that weren’t themselves designer.

Can I claim from my travel insurance and the airline at the same time?

Yes — and you should. The insurer will deduct anything the airline pays so you’re not double-claiming, but combined cover usually exceeds the airline’s Montreal Convention cap. Travel insurance often also covers items the airline excludes (electronics, jewellery up to a sub-limit). File both within their respective deadlines.

When is my bag legally “lost” rather than “delayed”?

Most airlines reclassify a bag as lost after 21 days of non-recovery, at which point you can claim depreciated value of the contents up to the Montreal Convention limit (currently 1,288 Special Drawing Rights, roughly £1,300 / $1,700). Before 21 days you’re claiming interim expenses against the same cap.

Would a QR luggage tag have helped?

It wouldn’t stop the airline’s own sorting system from going wrong — the airline barcode is what does the routing. But the moment a human picks up your bag, a QR tag gives them a way to contact you directly with their location, rather than waiting for the formal tracing system to catch up. In practice that often shaves a day or two off recovery time.

The short version

File the PIR before you leave the terminal. Get the file reference. Buy reasonable essentials and keep every receipt. Track online for 24 hours, then phone the airline. Escalate to central tracing at 48 hours. Open a parallel claim with your travel insurer. After 21 days, the bag is officially lost — claim depreciated contents from the airline up to the Montreal cap and the rest from the insurer.

The reassuring bit: the overwhelming majority of delayed bags catch up with their owners within a few days. Industry mishandling reports published annually by SITA consistently put the global reunification rate in the high 90s. You’re probably going to be fine. The recovery is just faster, calmer, and cheaper if you do the boring things in the right order.

If your bag went missing at a specific airport, the guides for Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, JFK and LAX cover terminal-by-terminal specifics.