A woman checked in for her flight home from Europe on Air France with a suitcase full of Christmas gifts. But when she arrived in Boston, she found her luggage ransacked and filled with dog food and other items instead. Now she’s upset with Delta Air Lines over its compensation for the incident.
Women Returns From Paris To Find Her Air France Checked Bag Full Of Dog Food Instead Of Christmas Gifts
Gina Sheldon was dismayed to find that upon flying back from Paris (CDG) to Boston (BOS) on Air France, her baggage arrived…but not with the contents she packed. All the Christmas gifts she had purchased during her holiday in Europe were gone. In their place: dog food and other random items.
She told Fox 10, “2021 was not the best year, so these gifts were also my way of saying thank you to people.”
All appeared normal when she claimed her bags from the baggage claim carousel and proceeded through customs, but when she got home she discovered the problem:
“When I opened my luggage all of the gifts were gone and replaced with individual plastic bags filled with dog food, dirty t-shirts and empty French body product containers.”
Ransacked items included:
- belts
- Christmas ornaments
- clothes
- handbags
- kitchen utensils
- pictures
“Each day I think of something else that was in there.”
Sheldon claims to have spent 20 hours trying to contact Delta via various channels only to hit a brick wall. She then reached out to local media, which aired her story. Four hours later, Delta called her.
Why Delta instead of Air France? Sheldon purchased her ticket through Delta and her Air France flight was a Delta codeshare. Delta and Air France are transatlantic joint venture partners.
On December 29th, Delta stated:
“We apologize for this customer’s experience following Air France flight 334. We have affirmatively connected with our partners at Air France and the customer to find a resolution.”
Delta deposited 75,000 miles in Sheldon’s SkyMiles account, which Sheldon claims does not cover the cost of her ticket nor compensate for her stolen luggage contents. Delta’s baggage website does not promise restitution, but does vow to “to help make it right.” Sheldon added:
“Getting the reimbursement has been a challenge. With being so frustrated, and again feeling like I was being given the royal runaround, I asked to speak to someone at a higher level at Delta but I have not heard back. I also find it disappointing that Delta says customers are their number one priority, but I have received canned emails and responses, or they cite carriage agreements and their policies as to why they could not reimburse my ticket. I have been a loyal customer for years, but quite honestly, that does not seem to matter at all. Just disappointing.”
But what’s really disappointing is Sheldon’s unrealistic expectations. Yes, it’s sad that her Christmas gifts were stolen. But I just don’t see how that is Delta’s fault when Air France operated it. Why is she not more aggressively condemning Air France? Does she have credit card insurance that might compensate her for the stolen goods?
Delta SkyMiles are called “SkyPesos” for a reason, but 75,000 miles seems like rather generous compensation to me (and should be enough for a second trip to France if she is able to find saver space).
Asked again about the incident by local media, Delta issued a somewhat snarky response:
“We apologize for this customer’s experience with baggage, despite an otherwise pleasurable experience. We have been in contact with the customer to offer fair compensation as an additional token of our apology for the experience she had while flying our partner Air France.”
Sheldon should have used a credit card like the Capital One Venture X, which provides up to $3,000 in lost or damaged luggage coverage. Putting the blame on Delta for this incident strikes me as unreasonable.
CONCLUSION
It’s never fun to find your luggage ransacked and special gifts you hand-selected replaced with dog food and dirty clothes. But I think Sheldon is grasping for straws by assigning Delta blame for this incident. Instead, she should be going after Air France and ideally filing an insurance claim.
image: Gina Sheldon
The traveler lost priceless Christmas items so you disparage her for not doing things how you would.
And then try plugging a credit card.
I think you need to deflate your ego a bit Matthew.
I agree, I felt it was a bit of a poor taste to put down this traveler. Not all travelers are road warriors with experience on how to handle these type of situation. If I had booked my ticket with Delta even though it was codeshare with AF, I would still have gone after Delta and I think most people would.
Also agree with all of these points. A code share makes Delta responsible just as a code share gives part of it’s revenue to Delta. The fact is that USA airlines are allowed to get away with murder vs European airlines. What has to change if these types issues are to be minimized is for the government to make companies more accountable for the actions of their operations. Not just do whatever they want to do and put disclaimers in small print to cover their behinds.
Clearly you don’t travel much. It was Air France who caused the damage— Not Delta. Why go after the witness who saw the thief steal the cookie jar instead of the thief?? Jeez!!
1) She booked a flight through Delta on a Delta JV partner, so for all intents and purposes this is a Delta flight
2) Most travelers aren’t going to know about baggage insurance via cards
3) As much as I like Delta and get use out of SkyMiles, 75,000 will at best get a return trip in to Paris in economy, but very unlikely – the best way to value it is $750, which is unlikely to cover the cost of the gifts
4) Delta/Air France should get to the bottom of the security issue if contents were stolen / switched out while in the care of the partnership
IMO Delta should take better care of this customer
Respect you Matthew but have to agree with the comments above. The low hanging fruit to deal with here is Delta, as Air France (we all know) will be far more difficult to deal with. Further, the compensation airlines are required to provide is absurd. Even the extra insurance provided by credit cards. It just gives the companies incentive to pay off a cheap claim and walk away, ignoring the root of the problem.
My take on this article is more attention being paid to the rather bizarre (but genius) approach of loading the bag with items to give it girth and weight. The (clearly) Air France handler who grabbed the items knows that AF will probably not even talk to the customer unless they noticed and made an immediate claim at baggage. An interesting suggestion for you to perhaps write about would be that we all need to open and inspect our bags PRIOR to exiting the baggage area. Or shrink wrapping bags like they love in South America.
And for those of you with locks on your Rimowa like me, don’t even bother. TSA has access, as does anyone along the food chain of moving your bag.
Delivery companies like FedEx and UPS are notoriously plagued with internal theft. I can cite numerous examples in my own business of how bad it has become. Unless you protect yourself at every step these thieves know well that their company will ignore it, will not investigate, and refuse to acknowledge claims. I am at the point of advocating body cameras on all package delivery employees. Airline handlers are now probably catching on to it all and grabbing a bit of the easy grab.
Luggage handlers at many airports are not employed by the airline one happens to fly on, but by other companies, so I would not accuse Air France staff of stealing luggage. But yeah, the operating carrier bears partial responsibility under the Montreal Convention to ensure a customer’s belongings are transported safely, and claims can be made against Air France on the basis of this.
the tone of this article is way overboard…way to sound like a condescending jerk because someone doesn’t know the intricacies of flights, code shares and credit cards as well as you.
The customer has a fair expectation that the theft of her property will be both investigated and compensated. Posting a link to a credit card that you are promoting cheapens the post and clouds it’s overall intent.
So this is a funny one – the Capital One link takes me to onemileatatime!? Also a great website but wondering is that expected… As for coverage maybe tricky as Capital One seems to state”Lost Luggage Reimbursement. If your bags are lost by a travel provider or get stolen, you can get reimbursed for up to $3,000 per trip.” The bags were no stolen so is the major question for Delta and a card provider not “How do you prove the contents were replaced with dog food?”
Yes, we partner with OMAAT for credit cards.
Yes, I get the Delta piece but apparently there was never a Delta related person involved in the incident. She checked her bag with AF, AF was responsible for her bag. Thus, AF should be the one in the hook. BTW, although it would not help in this case, I had Apple Airtags in my checked bags on my last international trip and they were fantastic. I could see that my bags were inside the plane and when they were getting into the bag carrousel in my destination. Worth every dollar for the peace of mind.
Wow, tough crowd this afternoon. Maybe I am being to harsh on the traveler. Thanks all for your input.
She bought a Delta ticket, so it’s only right for those not in the know to call Delta what’s up. But when you call up the customer service doesn’t the greeting say “Delta, Air France and KLM?”
Isn’t it almost impossible to receive any insurance compensation from credit card coverage unless one has an exact inventory of the luggage and receipts to match less depreciation?
You are indeed being too harsh on the passenger. The contract is with the vendor, subcontractors will usually* be able to weasel out of any obligation to the end consumer. In fact, given your background in law, I am pretty surprised that you have made no mention of the compensation that would in all likelihood be due under the provisions of the Montreal Convention (or even your rationale as to why it *wouldn’t* apply in this case).
* The obvious exception to this is 261/2004 and its UK equivalent which explicitly mention the operating carrier as being responsible for compensating and looking after pax
@Matthew, IIRC, you stopped using Grammarly, but something’s going on with your autocorrect. This post only had one error, but your previous post was littered with “woman” vs. “women” (singular/plural) mistakes, including the title.
As for the traveler, I don’t blame her for her confusion or for dealing with DL instead of AF (doesn’t DL do ground handling for them anyway?).
Fishy.
You would be better off using articles like this to remind passengers of their statutory compensation rights under the Montreal/Warsaw Conventions, which would apply to pretty much any international travel undertaken. While not a huge sum, airlines are liable to pay claims up to around $1800 (varies per the SDR rate) for lost/damaged checked baggage and the Montreal claims process should be fairly straightforward.
I have doubts that Air France would have done anything knowing the always defensive approach to customer complaints they are legendary for. The catch in this, and what I think what have transpired, is them saying, “You left the baggage area and went home, we have no way to confirm that those items were or were not in your bag when transported or what occurred after you left. Claims for missing items must be made at the airport with the baggage department for that reason.”
I think this is exactly the reason the thief took the time to load the bag with junk so that the person would not notice until home and Air France would ignore it and not investigate.
Just read this article this morning. I noticed the yellow SkyPriority tag on the luggage so the passenger either flew business class or is a gold medallion or higher (frequent flyer). Just really odd. I wonder if the thief included other smuggled goods there that another baggage handler or TSA in BOS picked up before it was placed in baggage claim.
I don’t think you’re being too harsh. If this was a bona fide theft, which it appears to be, couldn’t she file a police report and make a homeowners or renters insurance claim? At a minimum, 75K points are worth $750, that’s no small number. I was involuntarily downgraded from a paid J ticket to Y (in the EU no less) by United, and they’ve only offered me 6K miles so far. If they gave me 75K I certainly wouldn’t be pushing for EU261 compensation.
Mathew, your opinion and or comment appears mean and that you are promoting injustice. Please be kind to others.
This happens most of the times on landing at Indian Airports and passengers just don’t bother. . Filing a claim would means umpteen trips to the Airlines offices and or the police station . It would be cheaper to buy those gifts again or to convince your loved ones to wait for another time for their gifts , that is if they don’t get robbed again . Security is hand in gloves with these burglars inspire of the so called world class airports . This is a huge scam worldwide and Governments are doing nothing about it .
She has rights under the Montreal Convention here, not to mention you completely gloss over how the opacity of these JV agreements acts to completely confuse anyone who isn’t a lawyer or an av geek. She is right to go to the people who literally sold the the ticket and put their code on the flight. If they promptly, like within an hour, got her to AF and AF compensated her, it wouldn’t be an issue. But they engaged in frustration tactics BS.
You are very, very wrong to criticize her.
Had a very similar situation happen coming back from Germany on United several years ago. Found the German schnapps we bought and carefully wrapped replaced with children’s lederhosen…