Is the case closed on my claim for damaged luggage?

Q I had the pleasure of visiting South Korea for two weeks during September. I found the Korean people the most friendly and generous I have met. My only problem involved Air China. This carrier took us from Heathrow via Beijing to Seoul. On the return journey my suitcase was damaged when I collected it at Heathrow. I could not find anyone to contact from Air China, so travelled back home by train and immediately informed the airline by email to its baggage claims department.

Despite sending about five emails, and contacting customer services which forwarded my email internally to baggage claims at Heathrow, I never received a reply over an eight-week period. The baggage claims phone at Heathrow was never answered despite numerous attempts. I finally lodged a complaint with the CAA, which took me an age online. I then immediately received an email informing me that they do not handle baggage complaints regarding Air China.

The damaged case is only worth about £40, but what makes me feel disappointed is the total lack of customer care. I am not sure where to go from here. What do you suggest?

David K

A How frustrating. It’s unfortunate that you were not told on arrival at Heathrow how to instigate a claim for damaged baggage. Every airline works with a ground handler that has a desk in the baggage reclaim area. That is the appropriate place to fill in a Property Irregularity Report – although I accept that after a 12-hour flight, the last thing you feel like doing is going through all the hassle involved.

Once you leave the airport, I am afraid you risk leaving your rights behind. Although in theory you can claim for damaged luggage up to a week after the flight, airlines have an easy excuse once you leave the airport, because it is down to you to prove that the damage happened while the baggage was in their care.

The runaround you got from other organisations was far from ideal, but for future reference the Civil Aviation Authority does not get involved in cases where the airline is a member of an alternative dispute-resolution body.

So I recommend reluctantly that you drop the dispute and be glad for a such a rewarding trip to Korea. I hope the unfortunate baggage issue is, in comparison, a mere annoyance.

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Q We were in Vienna for a gig, but were involuntarily and unceremoniously offloaded from the flight home, which was overbooked. We were offered an alternative the following day. But we needed to be back at work and being a day late simply wasn’t acceptable. So we booked ourselves on to another direct flight, which cost each of us €500 (£424).

The airline that offloaded us has agreed to pay the statutory EU compensation of €400, but has refused any of our additional costs, including food and taxis, as well as the replacement flights, because they said we had refused their offer of seats the following day. They’ve completely shut the case down. What can we do?

Name supplied

A When you were offloaded against your will from an overbooked flight, the airline became liable for paying compensation, which it is doing. But under European rules on air passengers’ rights the airline was also responsible for providing you with “re-routing, under comparable transport conditions, to [your] final destination at the earliest opportunity”.

Annoyingly for you, the “earliest opportunity” has never been fully defined. For flights beginning in the UK, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says that if the errant airline cannot offer an alternative flight on the same day, but another carrier can, then it must buy the offloaded passenger a seat on it.

Unfortunately, this principle does not necessarily apply to flights beginning abroad, even if they are going to the UK. The country of origin’s interpretation applies. I am not aware of the Austrian aviation authority setting a same-day stipulation like the CAA’s.

Nevertheless, I suggest you file a claim for your losses under the European small-claims procedure while you still can; cases that begin while the UK is still in the EU will be allowed to continue.

However, this has some risk of throwing good money after bad. Your chance of success could be dented if the airline can demonstrate you didn’t pursue every possible option with it before spending a lot of extra cash – for example, flying to Paris or Brussels and continuing by train.

Regarding the other expenses: if they were reasonably incurred, then the airline should pay them on production of receipts. But it could argue that, in effect, you cancelled your ticket, at which point the airline’s obligation ended.

The European rules are a mess, largely because of vague and inadequate wording. Regrettably, as you found, airlines can use this lack of clarity to their financial advantage.

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Q I cannot believe the level of anger and frustration that has led me to contact you. I had a pre-Christmas break booked for myself and a friend to Prague. I booking flights and hotel through an online agent, flying out from Gatwick with easyJet and returning with Smart Wings. Five weeks before departure, an email from the agent informed us of a change to our return flight. Instead of our 12.30pm departure from Prague with Smart Wings, we were being moved to a 9.30pm departure with easyJet – a nine-hour difference. There is, in fact, an easyJet flight departing Prague at 11.55am that day which I asked for us to be rebooked on.

Three weeks later (and with 10 pages of notes of umpteen fruitless conversations) I am still being fobbed off with excuses. As time is running out, I’m hoping you may have some suggestion that might help me?

Sally O

A How frustrating. Travel firms that put packages together like to claim “sole discretion” for determining if a change is “significant”, and evidently yours feels that a nine-hour change in departure time is insignificant. Since there is no legislation defining the term, it can do so with impunity – though I suspect that, were you to complain to Abta, the travel association, you might get an adjudication in your favour.

But since there is little time before your departure, let me provide a simple and relatively low-cost solution – based on easyJet’s excellent “earlier flight” option. Basically, it means that if seats are available on an earlier departure on the same day to your destination (or, in the case of multi-airport cities, to a nearby airport), you can switch on the day for a flat fee of £30.

In theory you can do this on the easyJet app. Your agent should have sent you a seven-digit booking code, beginning E, for your flight from Prague to Gatwick. Get the easyJet app and enter your flight details. Enjoy your break in Prague, and on the final morning go on to the app and see if you can transfer your booking from the late flight to the lunchtime departure.

It’s a non-obvious procedure, and so you might prefer to go out to Prague airport at least an hour before the 11.55am flight and ask at the customer service desk to make the change there. The chance that no seats will be available is, in my view, extremely low; this is the first week of December, so I am confident you will be able to switch.

However, you will also be £30 out of pocket. You can ask your travel agent for this back; if it declines, then you can ask Abta to adjudicate on whether a nine-hour change is significant.

Finally, in my experience there are plenty of excellent non-online travel agents who provide outstanding service. I get far more complaints about online firms than I do about human agents.

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Q I’m looking to book a flight from London to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, next September. Aeroflot has a competitively priced ticket with a two-hour transfer at Moscow Sheremetyevo. Do you think this is sufficient?

Nick S

A Flying from Heathrow via Moscow to the city Aeroflot describes as Ulan-Bator is almost the most direct route between London and the Mongolian capital; the only straighter journey would be via Helsinki, but Finnair does not yet operate to Ulaanbaatar. Therefore your carbon footprint will be as low as it can be, and in addition the journey should not be too debilitating.

From end to end the two-flight trip is scheduled to take exactly 12 hours to cover about 4,500 miles in total – leaving Heathrow at 10.40am and arriving in the Mongolian capital at 5.40am, local time, next day. And in between, you have Moscow. I have been using the Aeroflot hub at Sheremetyevo airport in the Russian capital since the 1980s. At that time it was dreadful, with two disjointed, shambolic terminals, one on either side of the two main runways.

Today the airport has been transformed, with the modern Terminal D serving as the main base for Aeroflot’s international flights, as well as those of its partners in the Skyteam alliance. As you will not be going through Russian passport control, nor collecting your luggage, it should be a smooth transfer. As it happens, this time last year I allowed two hours for a self-connecting flight between an Aeroflot domestic flight and a British Airways departure to London, which worked just fine – even with a remote stand (and bus journey) on arrival, and the need to change terminals and to go through Russian exit formalities.

You will be in a much better position, remaining within the same terminal. After the security check you might even consider paying for entry to the Aeroflot lounge (the Russian airline allows “ordinary” passengers to do so, but I have not been able to find the current rate). In the unlikely event that your morning flight from Heathrow is delayed, Aeroflot will do all it can to rush you through; were it to fail, it would need to pay for hotel accommodation and possibly cash compensation, depending on the reason for the delay.

Some aircraft news: the Heathrow-Moscow stretch will be aboard the comfortable Airbus A321. And on the second leg, the small Boeing 737 that is operating the route this winter will be replaced by September by the much more spacious A330. Finally, by September the new official name for Sheremetyevo airport – Alexander Pushkin – may have been fully adopted, which will help everyone not fluent in Russian.

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