Canceled flights and luggage??

Question

On Friday my flight was canceled to Jamaica and we were put on another flight to Montego Bay on Sunday (tomorrow). We were informed on Friday that our luggage which was already checked would not be returned to us however would be sent to Montego on the next flight. I called US air today and was told that my luggage had not been scanned yet at Montego Bay airport but MOST LIKELY it would be there at some point. I am freaking out!!!! Why wouldn't the airlines give us our luggage back and just have us re-check it again when we flew down Sunday? I am so worried that when I get to Jamaica tomorrow I will have no luggage. Has this ever happened to anybody before? Will my luggage be there? What should I do nobody is really giving me answers at Philly baggage? THANKS!

Answer 1

It's just lousy service. There is no reason why they could not have returned it. All they had to do was treat it like an inbound flight - take it off the plane and put it on a luggage carousel.

Northwest did that to me once. A flight was canceled and we were rebooked for the following morning. They refused to return the luggage because "no one in management had authorized it." They put me on another airline's flight the next day, but sent my luggage on a later Northwest flight.

I know that it can be done because I've seen it . Weirdly enough, Northwest had also forced me to stay overnight in Philadelphia a few weeks earlier and they returned our luggage immediately without even having to ask for it. We rechecked it the following morning. Apparently, their manager in Philadelphia is much better at customer service than the morons in Detroit.

Good luck. I hope that your luggage is there. If not, raise h**l and keep receipts for anything that you need to buy so that you can give them to the airline for reimbursement. Someone at US Airways should be able to tell you how much they will reimburse.

Answer 2

Most likely they will put it on the plane with you tomm.

Unfortunately, the baggage systems at airports are not designed to spit luggage back out in the arrivals section.  To give it back to you they would have basically had to pull it all out, then run it through the arrivals system.  And that's even less fun than it sounds.  Usually what they will do is stack it aside and feed it out on subsequent flights.  If flights were canceled today, it would not have gone down yet.

Philly doesn't have RFID tagging yet, so the baggage office really doesn't know where it is in the system until it hits the next airport.