Lost luggage at Heathrow, after 24 days my suitcase is back home
Twenty days later I return to talk about my lost suitcase after a KLM flight from Amsterdam to London [...]
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20 days later I come back to talk about my missing suitcase. after a KLM flight from Amsterdam to London Heathrow, the airport from which I left for My round-the-world trip in eight days.
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In this article:
On July 8, I landed at London Heathrow terminal 2. arriving from Amsterdam, a 45-minute flight I often take when traveling to the English capital from Italy. Upon arrival, I found myself in a sort of Dantesque circle with thousands of bags piled everywhere for days. After more than two hours of waiting, I gave up waiting for my suitcase.
@theflightclubsocial Nightmare @ Heathrow airport, #luggage unattended will be .... ?
♬ Fantozzi (Titles) - Franco Bixio & Fabio Frizzi & Vince Tempera
The most surreal thing about the situation were. announcements urging passengers not to abandon their luggage, under penalty of destruction for security reasons, and to check that they have taken their own suitcase and not another passenger's.
Given this scenario, where anyone could "pick" two suitcases at random and walk out of the airport undisturbed, I had little hope of ever seeing my luggage again. After an endless wait and in the midst of thousands of bewildered and enraged passengers, I raised the white flag and filed a lost luggage report at the counters of Cobalt, which handles for KLM in London After receiving my PIR, property irregularity report, I went to the hotel.
Also because the last tracking I had of my suitcase, via the airtag I always put in my luggage when I board it, was in Amsterdam, and so I was convinced that my suitcase had stayed in Holland, another country where theThis summer's Airmageddon is causing problems to no end.
Thank you Airtag
The next morning, when I woke up, I saw that my suitcase had arrived in London. The only problem was that I didn't have time to go and try to get it back without risking losing the first leg of my round-the-world journey, namely the flight to Tokyo. I was therefore forced to leave for the cangaroo route without any luggage.
In the course of my trip, however, I was able to track the movement of my suitcase: thanks to Apple's technology, if there is an Iphone within range of the airtag, the location of the tag is updated. On the one hand, this reassured me about its location; on the other, I could not understand why it was not being returned to my address.
I was seeing so day after day, small and large shifts. From T2 to T3 and so on. When I landed in London on July 17, on the last flight of my round-the-world trip, it just so happened that I was in the same building as my suitcase, in fact according to the airtag I was exactly on top (or under) my suitcase. Impossible, however, to get assistance and retrieve the suitcase.
The 21st day
The laws of air transportation state that. After 21 days of delay, the suitcase is definitely considered missing, companies under the Montreal Convention are therefore obliged to compensate the passenger for non-delivery. This is a passenger's right and is not linked to any additional insurance, personal or otherwise. One must send a second complaint to the company and wait.
The procedures are well explained on the AF/KLM website, the information easy to find and all the steps simple to perform. Having said that, being a platinum frequent flyer in the Flying Blue program, I expected a better attitude from the carrier, instead nothing neither an email nor a call, despite the fact that I had made many emails and calls.
Saturday, July 30, the call from AF
I was beginning to think that the suitcase was no longer where I thought it was, but that it was simply just the airtag in some Heathrow crawlspace with the suitcase and its contents at someone's house. On Saturday morning, however, I saw that the location was no longer what it had been in recent days, but in a new area of the airport, outside the terminals.
Also on Saturday morning I finally Received a phone call from AF. to apologize for the incident, to inform me of the passenger's rights, and to tell me that the company would do everything to find my suitcase sooner or later. I explained to the attendant that thanks to the airtag I knew where my suitcase was indicatively, immediately she asked me to send her the location and that she would in real time contact the staff in London.
Toward evening, so out of curiosity, I checked again where my suitcase was and with great surprise I saw that he was at Amsterdam Schiphol, probably in transit to be boarded the following morning on one of two flights to Genoa.
And that is exactly what happened. Over the course of the morning I saw the suitcase change position several times until it remained in the B36 gate area, the departure gate for flight KL1565. And right on time, as soon as Embaraer 175 landed and the hold was opened, here was the new updated location. Genoa Airport.
The happy ending
As chance would have it, therefore, I was able to retrieve my suitcase. as I was leaving for another flight, right from Genoa airport. In this case it can truly be said: all's well that ends well.
