I suppose it’s a bit much to hope your checked bag will arrive without a scratch or a dent, but one Air France passenger found his bag was delivered shredded. Literally shredded.
Man Arrives in Athens After Air France Flight To Find His Checked Bag Literally Shredded
Here, a picture is worth 1,000 words:
A man posted this on Reddit, claiming this is “the way Delta/AirFrance returned my checked baggage. Everything is missing.” Although he posted it on the Delta forum, based upon the baggage tag it appears he was on AF1232 from Paris (CDG) to Athens (CDG).
So what could have happened? The bag flew out of the baggage cart and was dragged on the tarmac for several minutes? French aviation security inspectors thought they saw something in the bag?
I’ve dealt with multiple damaged checked bags over the years, but never anything like this…I wonder what the baggage handler was thinking when he grabbed that in Athens and put it on the belt? Or maybe it was his fault? Or maybe it got caught on the luggage belt in Athens and was torn there?
The passenger will be compensated under the Montreal Convention, but if this was the start of the trip, the time and effort required to replace the contents of the bag become quite annoying.
Any theories as to what happened with this pathetic-looking checked bag?
It looks like the missing dog at the ATL airport got a hold of it and had a little play/chew session before it made it on the plane :).
Uzbekistan Air broke one of the wheels off of my Away suitcase a few months ago. They refused to address it. I used my Sapphire Reserve to book the flight and tried to file an insurance claim and got nowhere – They tried to get me to present about a dozen pieces of paperwork, only to conclude that the insurance covers lost luggage only, not damaged luggage.
Finally I contacted Away travel. They immediately sent me a replacement for free, no questions asked. A huge contrast between a great business and a couple of truly terrible ones.
Did you visit Uzbekistan? What did you think of the carrier?
I did, Along with Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, which were all very nice. Onboard service with Uzbekistan air was decent, but most everything else was not. Their website is buggy, it is hard to get in touch with customer support, and they make you check everything over 7 kg. The suitcase they broke is the Away bigger carry on, which is usually never a problem to bring onboard as cabin baggage. So not only did they make me pay to check it, but they refused to do anything about it after they broke it.
Their official reason is that I did not notify their ground staff of the damage when I landed. That was at Bishkek airport and although I did look, I could not find any Uzbekistan employees or offices.
I had to bribe my way out of Kazakhstan, but I quite enjoyed Kyrgyzstan – Bishkek is an interesting capital.
I just read your story – absurd that you had to go through that. Fortunately you don’t need a visa nowadays for less than 30 days so I would imagine there are a lot fewer of those shenanigans.
As for Kyrgyzstan – Bishkek is certainly interesting, very soviet. The best part of my visit there would have to be the mountains, which have some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen.
One of my favorite travel stories (from a friend) about a broken wheel on his luggage. He complained to Swiss and they were so cool about it, they gave him a voucher for the airport shop and he picked up a shiny new bag. I asked him how the new bag is and he said “I still use the old one. It’s fine despite one wheel being broken.”
Regarding the shredded bag: this is why I prefer hard-shell luggage. I also put stuff in bags inside of my bag (matryoshka style) to help organize it for myself and TSA.
I’m thinking the bag was somehow attached to one of the tires and got dragged on the runway for takeoff and landing.
Have you ever seen from the plane window how they treat the bags while loading them on the plane? It is always a big question if you invest in a quality bag or not. You know the airline will try to trash it but if better quality it may survive. Looking at his duffel it looks pretty bad quality. No excuse for what happened but that is where a better quality bag may save the day. I have heavy duty North Face duffel bags and they are the only ones I use. It is not cheap but harder to be trashed like that. Same goes to regular luggage. The goal is to protect what is inside and not the bag itself.
Appears that the bag fell off the baggage cart and get stuck under the wheel of a baggage cart and was dragged. I have seen it happen before. The bag should have been taken into the baggage claim office and then the passenger paged to the office.
It looks like it went through one of the engines. 😉
As we can see on the tag, the bag received AF’s priority treatment…
It says RUSH so was likely a delayed bag that was expedited and got stuck in some belt or sorting system
long long ago in a time far away, i once worked in an airline BSO. An irate gentleman rushed in with damaged golf clubs. It seems the bag of clubs fell between the baggage carts and the dragging of the clubs across the ramp created and beautiful handsome set of expensive spears. I recall having to stiffle a laugh it was so appalling. I think back in those days the max you could claim was $500. His putter probably cost that much. All i could do was apologize, and i gave him a willing VP’s number to call on Monday.
This is what happens when a strap gets caught in the automated baggage handling/sorting system most airports have between baggage check in and baggage cart loading, no loose straps/handles to get hung up is our rule when travelling, we even over-tape the latch catches so they cannot ‘accidentally’ be unlocked on our hard-cases.