Another reason you should never place valuables inside your checked bag: your luggage might fall out onto the tarmac and be run over by truck.
Although that is merely an allegation by one disgruntled Qantas passenger, the proof is overwhelming as far as I am concerned.
Melissa Chung was flying from Melbourne to Perth and had checked a bag containing most of her belongings for the trip. Upon arrival in Perth, she found her bag wrapped in plastic with a note saying, “Come and see us.”
She opened her bag and started pulling out items. Clothing? Destroyed. Laptop? Destroyed. Toiletries? Destroyed.
Take a look at these pictures. It seriously appears like her her bag was run over. How else could her items become so mangled? Every piece of clothing was shredded.
Chung told news.com.au:
From all the shredding of the stuff inside, I feel like it must have gotten stuck under a wheel or something, because the dress and the clothes — they’re just shredded.
Qantas staff members were not helpful. They told Chung to file an insurance claim, though she had not taken out any insurance on the trip. She calculated the value of her damaged goods at about $2200. Qantas said it could not take responsibility for her valuables and that she should have known better than to check them. Chung responded:
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect people to have travel insurance for a domestic flight.
I don’t either. But I do think it is reasonable to keep valuable electronic devices with you at all times. I don’t care if I am sleeping and have no desire to use my laptop: it stays with me and will never be placed in my checked bag. Even if I encounter a situation in which I am late to board and forced to gate check a bag, I simply will never entrust my electronic devices (and other small valuables) to the belly of an airplane.
CONCLUSION
Just a friendly reminder, never place anything too valuable in your checked bag. Never. Just don’t do it. Picture in your mind your bag being run over by a truck.
Hopefully Qantas will do the right thing and throw some compensation at Chung.
image: Qantas
Typical Qantas. Deny, deny, deny and refuse to take responsibility or offer compensation…until it goes public. Probably true of most airlines but Qantas leads the pack and is a serial offender.
I think that it’s unacceptable that airlines aren’t forced to differentiate between normal rough handling and outright negligence. If I’m skiing and I fall and hurt myself because skiing is an inherently dangerous sport, the waiver I agree to in purchasing my lift ticket reasonably absolves the ski resort of responsibility. If I’m skiing and the ski patrol runs me down with a snowmobile, that waiver doesn’t absolve the resort from responsibility because that’s negligence on their part. It seems like baggage ought to be the same. If the bag is damaged because it fell off the loading belt, that’s a “normal and expected risk”. If an airplane taxied over my bag, that’s negligence.
Did you make an A in crim/torts?
This is terrible. However, putting a laptop in luggage shows poor judgment. Therefore, she is at fault for a small part of the damage but the ripped clothes and bag is totally not her fault.
This shows how things in the news often have a bad customer judgment component. In the African American student sleeping in a common area yesterday, both the complainer and the student are jerks. In the Philadelphia Starbucks, the two men were treated shabbily but they were militant to the police and they also didn’t buy anything.
The woman should get compensation from QF, no question. The laptop should be covered because no matter how rugged, it would have been damaged because clothes were ripped. However, usually, laptops shouldn’t be covered.
What type of idiot checks in a laptop? Zero sympathy here.