Baggage blues

I’m grumpy. I have not seen my suitcase since I left it at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport Monday December 2oth at 6 am. It’s now one week and one day later and neither Robert nor I have our suitcases. It’s a horrible comedy or errors. We started on Delta/Air France flights. Thanks to all the delays, we eventually ended up on an US Airways flight to Cincinnati. When we arrived in Boston last Tuesday, Air France was able to tell us that the bags were still in Paris. Since then, no one has been able to tell us where our bags are and none of the airlines seem to be playing fair in communicating with each other.

This morning, I received an e-mail from US Airways saying “While we continue our efforts to locate your property; it is now necessary to complete a Passenger Property Form to proceed with the claim.” It sounds to me like they are giving up on finding our bags and are going to pay us off. I have to include what each item is, what the size is, what I paid for it and if the price was more than $150, I have to include a receipt. Of course, I can’t get a straight answer as to how much they are going to pay, but I can guess that it will in no way cover what I paid for these items, many of which are not replaceable – the dress boots I got in Shanghai, the limited edition bottles of Swedish holiday snaps that I got for my Dad and uncle, the jewelry boxes for my nieces.

There are worse things that could happen to me, I know. At least we made it to my parent’s house for Christmas. But right now, I have invested way too much of my vacation time trying to resolve this problem.

A funny footnote from Euronews.net today: “Charles de Gaulle airport has over 10,000 items of lost luggage to process.” Our suitcases are somewhere in that mess.

Tagged as: Charles de Gaulle airport, lost baggage Air France, lost baggage Delta airlines, lost baggage US Airways