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Avelo Airlines operates a once-a-week round-trip flight between New Haven (HVN) and Traverse City (TVC), and I recently flew to & from TVC this way. On the return flight, it was announced that several bags had not been loaded onto the plane, and that we should talk to an Avelo agent if our bags were missing after all luggage had been unloaded.

My suitcase did thankfully make it onto the plane, but I was wondering how the delayed bags would be returned to their owners in this situation. In the past, the few times my bags have been mishandled, they were basically put on the next flight and brought to my hotel/home within 24–48 hours. But Avelo only operates flights to & from TVC once a week. Would passengers whose luggage was mishandled on this flight be forced to wait a week to get their bags back? Or do airlines have inter-line agreements to transport each others' mishandled baggage in situations like this?

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    There's also parcel services, namely UPS and FedEx.
    – user71659
    Commented Aug 12 at 22:57
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    FWIW, I was travelling with friends just a few weeks ago, where they arrived without luggage on a once-a-week flight. The airline did not do anything more than rerouting the luggage on their own flights, so that my friends eventually 'only' had to wait for five days on our holiday destination for their luggage instead of seven days, had the luggage been sent with the next flight on the same leg. There was no effort to send the luggage with another airline (there were plenty of other flights), nor to send the luggage with a courier or parcel service.
    – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo
    Commented Aug 13 at 10:20
  • @Tor-EinarJarnbjo That's the kind of BS that leads to legislation mandating large payouts so that people can buy replacement clothes or whatever for the interim.
    – Spehro 'speff' Pefhany
    Commented Aug 14 at 13:50

2 Answers 2

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There is no "one size fits all" method and it all depends on the specific airline and what arrangements they have. Most airports have local courier service(s) that handle lost luggage within driving distance. Lost luggage can also be carried by a different airline, if other flights are available. Losing luggage is more common on connecting flights than on direct ones. The connection is typically in a "hub" airport which tends to have good connectivity.

In this case, they could fly the bag from TVC to Newark, La Guardia or Boston and have local courier deliver it from there. The new Haven area is certain within an acceptable driving distance for this sort of thing.

If none of these works they could ship it with UPS, USPS, Fedex etc. That depends a bit on timing, plans of the traveler and total cost. In one case I picked up a lost bag at the airport on my day of departure: it had just arrived there.

If all else fails, they will simply pay for the loss.

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    A decade or so ago, a friend of mine went on a road-trip across the US (East to West Coast), and on arrival one bag was missing. Then followed a comedy act (in hindsight), where each evening they would inform the airline of the hotel they were at, and the airline would have the bag delivered... hours after they left the next day. Finally, they had the insight to give the airline the name of the next hotel they'd be staying at, and after nearly a week, finally got their bag, I believe in Las Vegas. When they recounted the story, I could only imagine the poor courier pursuing them...
    – Matthieu M.
    Commented Aug 13 at 8:20
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There are such agreements between airlines, and ad hoc even more is possible.

Case in point. Years ago my dad was flying from Amsterdam to Sao Paulo on KLM, his bags were inadvertently loaded onto a flight for Frankfurt instead (error of the label readers in the luggage department at Schiphol most likely).

The bags were identified at Frankfurt and loaded on the next Lufthansa flight to Sao Paulo, where my dad was contacted where and when to pick them up. Eventually he had his bags with a delay of about 5 hours rather than the 24 hours or more it'd have taken had they been returned to Amsterdam and put on the next KLM flight to Sao Paulo.

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