Down the rabbit hole in pursuit of a damaged luggage claim from airlines

Here is a scene which is not difficult to imagine: you are checking in your luggage for a domestic flight. You are asked the standard questions (“did you pack the bag yourself...”) and have been asked to confirm that there are no objects of value in your luggage. Your bag is tagged, you are given the receipt and you set off through security to a lounge or coffee shop to await boarding.

Your luggage is not Louis Vuitton; it’s Samsonite or Delsey, made for the rigours of airport baggage handling. You don’t give it another thought until you arrive at your destination and collect it off the carousel. That’s when you notice a massive crack – damage caused not by attempted theft but by an impact somewhere between the check-in counter and the arrivals hall.

You go to the airline’s luggage counter to report your loss, confident that your suitcase will be replaced or restored to its pristine condition. If you’re familiar with your rights under the Consumer Protection Act you would know that (this comes more or less verbatim from Section 65 of the Act) if “a supplier has possession of property ordinarily under the control of a consumer, the supplier must exercise the degree of care, diligence and skill that can reasonably be expected of a person responsible for managing any property belonging to another person and is liable to the owner of the property for any loss resulting from a failure to do so”.

This was certainly our thinking when my wife discovered extensive damage to her checked luggage from a recent Safair flight between Cape Town and Johannesburg. However, she quickly found out that this was not how things work for domestic air travellers in South Africa. 

Safair contracts its luggage management service to Menzies Aviation – a multinational which appears to handle several carriers. Ours was the last flight out of Cape Town that evening. 

At 10pm, it took her considerable time to find anyone at Menzies dealing with baggage. She was given a form to complete and advised she should submit it online, together with photographs of the damage. No one seemed particularly interested in examining the case. Clearly, these issues are generally dealt with online and not at the airport.

After that, the process was relatively quick. There was no dispute about the damage, or how it had happened. Nor, given the photos of a very new 65cm hard-shell suitcase, about the quality of the luggage.

So it came as something of a surprise to receive a mail within two working days of the incident advising “You [sic] claim was approved for a compensation value of [R650.00]. Unfortunately, due to the fact that there are other parties involved with baggage handling at the airport, we cannot compensate the full monitory [sic] value claimed for.”

After that, there was a flurry of correspondence while I tried (unsuccessfully) to find out why an airline should not be liable for the failings of its agents and contractors. I had only once previously had to claim from an airline – in this case BA – for damage to a bag. That was many years ago and the bag was replaced immediately. I assumed this was how things were handled.

I decided to investigate if I would have been better off with the other airlines. A simple question addressed directly to the spokespersons of the other major domestic carriers produced mainly a series of vague and non-committal responses; some were clarified only after more probing questions. In the end, they referred me to their websites and their Conditions of Carriage. In some cases, the one contradicted the other.

For domestic travellers, SAA says it will repair or replace the damaged bag – though it accepts no liability for “protruding parts such as wheels, feet straps, handles including telescoping/pull handles.”

Elsewhere on the airline’s website however there is a note which says the SAA does not accept liability for damage to hard-shell cases. This stands in curious contradiction to another note in the conditions of carriage which states that the airline will not accept liability for items checked in bags which “do not provide sufficient protection for their contents.”

I asked SAA’s Izanne Kotze to explain this seemingly irreconcilable position. She said it was simply a waiver for “inferior quality of baggage that is not able to sustain the normal wear and tear of air transportation”.

Lift’s conditions of carriage also state clearly that the airline also doesn’t accept liability for damage to hard-shell luggage – irrespective, it would seem, of the brand in question. There are no such waivers on the Safair and Airlink websites.

The airlines were quick to remind me that in purchasing the ticket, I was implicitly accepting their T&Cs. As it turns out, there is considerable case law (the so-called ticket cases) dealing specifically with this assumption when it comes to conditions of carriage. It imposes an obligation on the “proferens” (vendor) to do everything reasonably necessary to ensure that the purchaser is aware of these contractual conditions.

I don’t ever recall being invited to sign a limited release when checking in a suitcase. Nor do I recall being advised that my bag was unsuitable for air travel.

On the contrary, most conditions of carriage claim (as Lift does) that “we will only accept baggage for carriage if it and its contents can withstand ordinary handling” – which suggests that if you haven’t been advised by the check-in clerk that your hard-shell suitcase is unsuitable, you should be able to assume that it is. Check-in would be the ideal moment for the airline’s agent/employee to remind passengers that the carrier’s liability regarding the baggage is governed by the T&Cs of the ticket.

If you do decide to read the small print, you will find that Safair advises you not to check in anything worth more than R1,000 (though it would seem that this applies to the contents of the case rather than the case itself).

Lift sets a limit for baggage claims at $20 per kilo of checked luggage – which is the most generous stated compensation for any domestic carrier. SAA does not appear to set a maximum liability for domestic carriage: the only amounts shown on the site relate to international travel which is governed by the various international conventions.

While Airlink’s spokesperson says its payout policy is governed by the Warsaw and Montreal Conventions which “limit liability to 1,000 SDRs” (i.e. $1,330), the conditions of carriage state that if a bag is damaged beyond repair, Airlink will refund the purchase price of a new bag up to an amount of R1,500. (Good luck if you think you can find anything safe enough to check in within that price range).

Out of this informational mayhem, there is a constant refrain from all the carriers: they are not going to step up and accept that they – or their contractors – are fully liable for the damage to your luggage.

Some airlines – those who offer to sell you insurance – recommend taking out extra cover. Their message at least is unequivocal: to minimise the disruption to your life, and, if you can afford it, adopt the same approach to your check-on bags as you do your healthcare, security, schooling, and even the supply of water and electricity. 

Don’t depend on the obvious service provider – just assume the burden yourself and leave them to operate like uninsured vehicles on our public roads. DM

Michael Fridjhon is a wine industry professional and wine writer.