After an extended flight, arriving to your vacation spot solely to find that your bag didn’t is an actual drag. That unlucky circumstance befell me final week — upon arrival to Hamburg, Germany, I made my strategy to the luggage carousel, however my duffel bag was nowhere to be discovered. It was a serious inconvenience, because the bag contained all of my skilled apparel for the Plane Interiors Expo, the place I turned the primary wheelchair consumer to check the prototype of a wheelchair area for airplanes.

Whereas I hoped my bag would arrive earlier than the expo kicked off the following morning, that was to not be — I needed to make a last-minute journey to a clothes retailer. The rules surrounding misplaced or delayed baggage on worldwide flights are derived from the Montreal Conference, which limits an airline’s legal responsibility to 1,288 Particular Drawing Rights (SDR), value about $1,714 USD as of June 2023.

This legal responsibility is a tough restrict and, until you could have bought extra insurance coverage protection, your complete payout from an airline is not going to exceed the equal of 1,288 SDRs. As such, in buying gadgets to be used the following day, I made certain to purchase garments just like these in my checked bag — if the bag finally proved to be misplaced, I didn’t need to waste a part of that restrict on throwaway gadgets.

I bought one pair of pants, a button-up shirt, and underwear from the Polo Ralph Lauren retailer in Hamburg. The overall for these three gadgets was 359.85 EUR, or about $387 USD… almost 1 / 4 of the airline’s legal responsibility restrict.

My baggage was finally situated and I retrieved it from the airport the following day — whew! After I returned house to the USA, I filed a reimbursement request with Lufthansa and acquired a wierd e-mail in reply:

Lufthansa provides its clients the choice of receiving 100% reimbursement for interim purchases of clothes, toiletries and undergarments if the clothes gadgets (excluding toiletries and undergarments) are returned to Lufthansa. If the client prefers to maintain the bought gadgets, then we provide reimbursement at 50% for clothes and 100% of toiletries inside legal responsibility pointers and insofar as they don’t exceed the utmost restrict (corresponds to 1,288.00 particular drawing rights) established by the Montreal Conference.

Kindly tell us your desire in order that we will course of your declare.

I’ve confronted baggage delays quite a few occasions up to now, and this was a brand new one for me — an airline proposing that I pay to maintain the gadgets bought whereas the bag was misplaced! I puzzled, if I did return these (now used) garments, what would the airline do with them? Have been they really severe?

Given the excessive taxes imposed on clothes purchases within the EU and even with the 50% “low cost” seemingly supplied by the airline, I made a decision that I might nonetheless get a greater deal on clothes in the USA. The pants I had bought had been the unsuitable dimension anyway, so I responded with the next:

Not lengthy thereafter, I acquired one other reply from buyer relations at Lufthansa:

Our examination of the declare to a cost has proven that you’re entitled to it. Subsequently, we request that you just present us together with your checking account data (ACH routing code not ABA code).

Thanks upfront for submitting the knowledge, indicating your incident quantity (Suggestions ID XXXXXX).

Regardless of this disagreeable expertise, we sit up for welcoming you on board a Lufthansa flight once more quickly.

My declare was authorised, with no point out of returning the gadgets. The airline had bluffed, hoping they may persuade me to just accept a decrease reimbursement charge in trade for the clothes that I had bought. Lufthansa doesn’t need my pants, however they do need to attain into my pockets if I’ll enable it.

The airline’s sneaky try to cut back their legal responsibility is solely authorized — they didn’t break any guidelines by providing this “deal,” and I believe some vacationers do take them up on the provide. If an airline proposes an analogous provide to you, I might advise in opposition to accepting it — after a baggage delay, carriers are answerable for the total price of the gadgets you bought whether or not you’re in a position to return them or not.

In my opinion, the outfit I bought in Hamburg is compensation for the inconvenience and my time spent coping with the matter. Good attempt, Lufthansa, however I’ll hold the brand new threads AND my cash!