What happens when British Airways loses your luggage? Pretty much nothing...
Time elapsed between the time BA lost my baggage and failed to even be able to tell me where it is:
11 Days, 4 Hours, 31 Minutes
I travel a lot - well, a whole lot
more than the average
person. I'm abroad maybe eight or ten times a year.
Since all of these trips are for HEXUS, I often travel with a
lot
of
kit - a lot of
very
expensive
kit.
In the last few months I've flown all over the
globe. I've travelled with
Eva Air, Air Berlin, Oasis Hong Kong, Easy Jet, RyanAir, Cathay
Pacific, KLM, Lufthansa, United Airlines and TED. And even
China
Airlines - all with no problems.
So when I flew with the "world's favourite
airline", I
wasn't expecting any issues. After all, this
is British Airways - BA - my very own home
country's
airline.
I pride myself on being a model passenger. I
read all the
rules and sub-clauses for each airline and, as far as is humanly
possible, I follow them to the letter.
So
you won't
find me
with a carry-on bag that could be home to a
very
fat midget and then claiming it's not too large to go in an
overhead locker.
Nor
will you find me keeping everyone else waiting by not bothering to
remove my belt or empty my pockets before passing through
the metal detector in security.
So, given that I follow the rules, I reckon
that
it's completely fair to
expect the airline to do the same. And one of those rules -
unwritten admittedly - is that
they'll carry me and my baggage safely to my destination.
Well,
the
fact that I'm writing this now is testament to the fact that our
captain for the flight didn't decide to have an argument with a
cloud-shrouded mountain. He got me - and everyone else - home
in
one piece.
Sadly, though, my luggage didn't accompany me.
When we checked our bags in at Taipei we
decided to share
the luggage duties, so I checked in three of our seven bags
of kit while the
two other guys checked in the rest. When we landed back
at Heathrow, we waited patiently at collection point four.
A
trickle of bags came through, probably no more than 25 were
coughed out in half an hour. None of them mine, of course.
So I waited, along with my travelling
companions, as
the rest of our
checked-in baggage eventually came to light.
With
the exception of my main bag!
After the carousel
notice board switched and now showed that the luggage coming out would
be for a flight from South Africa, I went over
to the luggage desk.
I was asked to fill in a form and
told that my delayed
luggage would be sent on to me by courier.
Fair enough, says I, send it on and I'll go home and
get
some kip - we'd started our journey what seemed like an eternity
ago
in Taipei.
Little
did I know, though, that I'd just entered Missing-Baggage Hell...
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