Last Saturday we flew from Cairo to ZRH via Vienna. My original Swiss direct flight was cancelled so Swiss booked me on an alternative Austrian airlines flight via Vienna. Since the stopover was only an hour I anticipated my luggage may not make it, so I slipped an Apple AirTag into a bag so I could track it.
Sure enough when we landed in ZRH I could see that my luggage was last seen 10 mins ago in Vienna. I was initially relieved that at least it wasn't stuck in Egypt, so I filled out a lost luggage form and was advised that they should be delivered to ZRH within about 5 days.
Fast forward a week later and my luggage is still sitting at Vienna airport and the status on the website says they are searching for my bags. Any experience on how long this takes? Vienna Airport is their home base, and everything is barcode tagged so I can't understand the delay
The airline industry is in chaos. Normal timelines don’t apply. I know of someone who went to Canada, their bag was still in Heathrow when they got home - then it got sent to Canada and back to London, despite them having informed the baggage guys that they were home from Canada!
Call them. Last time it happened they registered the baggage tag incorrectly.... Told them after 4 days to **** search for a bag with a LH sen and AirBerlin tag, can‘t be that many, or?
Doesn’t matter that it’s their home base. Every airport is massively lacking in baggage handlers (hence many cancelled flights). The airline itself doesn’t put the bags on the plane, the handling agent does. Problem right now is that due to lack of baggage handlers, the pile of bags that missed flights is their lowest priority (over getting current bags on flights) and they just make their way through the back log as and when they can.
Maybe if they didn't have my name and destination on a securely fastened tag. Otherwise they're probably in some massive luggage mountain awaiting sorting.
Doesn’t the Airtag connect to any phone with bluetooth on and give location?
Then send this to airline.. Should be accurate to 10m so at least they would know where to look. If barcode come off suitcase then maybe a little tricky for them to pick correct case without make / colour / size etc.
In the lost luggage form I did specify the make, size, colour etc.. of each of the 3 bags. However I really don't think that long handle tag is just falling off the cases, it would have to be deliberately ripped off.
I can certainly give them the AirTag details if it helps them in their warehouse search, but I think its just a pure backlog of scanning that needs to be done by someone there.
If 3 bags then clearly not tags falling off all of them.
I’m sure you probably thought also,, but as flight was cancelled and a new flight booked , your booking reference might not match tags and/or flight number so they can’t locate with scanner. They might scan bags and it says flight unknown.. just a thought to give cancelled flight number?
Very stressful, in the good old days it took a day, maybe two and then the stuff arrived.
1 hour should also be enough for your luggage to make it.
But today everything is different.... I don't know when main holidays in Vienna are but perhaps it is a matter of waiting it out a few days, as annoying as that may be. I am not sure if insurance pays out until the bags are declared lost but you can probably buy essentials you may need and are stuck in the bag - even though that is always harder when you are at home vs on vacation.
I am just wondering whether in the case of lost luggage it makes any difference if you are flying 1st class, rather than business or economy? Do they look for 1st class tags on bags or are all bags handled the same?
I haven't been on a plane in 5 years. I detest flying and the current chaos is even more reason not to fly. Given the current mess I would be especially worried if I had to fly a pet somewhere. A pet anywhere but in the cabin sounds like a potential problem.
OP, I hope they get your bags get back to you soon.
First class bags are usually tagged as such and put in a separate container, which is loaded last so it is first off. But they still go through the same airport system so they can still miss a flight. But the airline airport manager themselves would go and hunt down a missing first class bag. Crew bags are also another thing, I used to tick off the crew bags on a list myself and hunt them down myself if one was missing - it was not worth your life to leave those behind!
If I had to send a pet by air right now I’d only do it as cargo and not as checked baggage. Cargo companies would take care of the pet either side of the flight and make sure it was at the aircraft on time.
As IM already said, first/business is often in a separate container. I have a SEN LH card and most of the time the priority luggage arrives first on the belt (and arrives).
Only time it took longer was because of (usual) chaos in Berlin and a baggage handler who could not read...... (manually entered the code wrong, no idea how he managed that). But after 5 days of calling LH hubby got his suitcase. And we had been shopping.....