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Why an airline owes me more than my lost baggage

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Jyotsna Mohan Bhargava
Jyotsna Mohan BhargavaJul 13, 2016 | 09:03

Why an airline owes me more than my lost baggage

My shy seven-year-old was shifting back home with trepidation. Not a very outgoing child, joining a school mid-term with everyone else well-settled made her nervous. So she clung onto what many would consider irrelevant but to her was a way of trivialising some big changes.

She made us buy her a new school bag before leaving Abu Dhabi, nothing fancy but just something she could happily focus on.

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Almost ten days later, my distraught daughter asks every day if we have found the bag.

The airline misplaced the baggage that contains almost everything that belonged to my children. Not just that, it was packed with memories and gifts from friends across nationalities who they may never meet again.

I have no answers because, amazingly, the concerned airline has not had the decency to even send a message or call. Not even once.

The world is shrinking they say, travel is easier and affordable, but it seems customer first is just an empty tagline.

No one had answers on the day we landed and staggeringly they have none today.

I wish they would just come out and say what is increasingly obvious, the bag is lost. Instead my desperate tweets and phone calls have the standard reply: "We will get back to you." Maybe they think I am applying for a job because, frankly, it all probably sounds the same to them.

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I find it upsetting that a baggage full of materials collected lovingly over time will likely be replaced with some compensation, completely shorn of emotion.

Does a passenger now forfeit all rights to his baggage once they are loaded onto a plane and just consider it a bonus if he gets them?

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For starters the airline officials have been looking at the wrong airport as we finally pointed out. But that doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference. They are either indifferent or really aren't bothered. I suspect both.

Priority tags on suitcases obviously don’t mean very much and my rare sojourn as a business class traveller obviously had no perks. On the contrary, I don’t think anyone deserves this experience where the victim does all the chasing.

Now consider how airlines must be treating those who are regular economy or "cattle" class passengers.

Wait, don’t imagine. Let me tell you.

Earlier this year, flying with their Indian alliance partner which is one of our most recognised private airlines, my passport was taken away by a member of the ground staff who belligerently insisted that he would not let me board.

The reason: on a delayed flight at 2am with two cranky, sleepy, small children I had the temerity to ask if I could be among the first to board. Clearly, it was remiss of me to think that everyone was sensitive to kids flying in the middle of the night.

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Over the last few months, both my father and my sister have had their baggage locks broken and their stuff meddled with while flying with different airlines, yet their repeated attempt to get answers hit a wall and in frustration they gave up. Most airlines are united in their empathy for the customer. It rarely exists.

To put it mildly, I find it upsetting that a baggage full of materials collected lovingly over time will likely be replaced with some compensation, completely shorn of emotion.

Mind you, I am just presuming there will be reimbursement, because I haven’t heard anything and there is only so much one can chase for what is his. But it leaves me wondering how to correlate such shoddy treatment with fancy airline advertisements starring Hollywood actors like Nicole Kidman which promise us the moon and instead make us crash land.

My rant resonated with another fellow traveller, former VJ Gaurav Kapoor, who hopefully asked our national airline "if no news was good news". Hopefully, Air India at least gave him some answers and his lost bag, but like he said, if there is anything more upsetting than a misplaced baggage it’s the lack of effort and communication by the concerned airlines.

It’s astounding the speed with which most airlines tweet back their thanks when a celebrity praises them for good service. But their real test is when a humble ordinary citizen like me wants some accountability or even a phone call. As I found out the hard way, a traveller and his airlines are not on the same page, just as a baggage and its owner are not at the same airport.

Last updated: July 13, 2016 | 09:03
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