What To Do in the First 24 Hours After an Airline Loses Your Bag

Airlines mishandled 33.4 million bags in 2024, according to SITA’s Baggage IT Insights report. If yours is one of them, you already know the feeling: an empty carousel, a queue at a desk nobody seems to be staffing, and a holiday or business trip suddenly running on the clothes you’re standing in.

Here’s the part the airlines don’t put on a poster. Whether you get properly compensated depends less on what the airline does next and more on what you do in the first 24 hours. Two-thirds of mishandled bags are back with their owners within 48 hours, but the paperwork you complete on day one decides what happens if yours isn’t.

Work through this checklist in order.

What To Do When the Airline Loses Your Bag

Hour One: Report the Bag Before You Leave the Airport

Do not walk out of the terminal. Instead, go straight to the airline’s baggage services desk (sometimes run by a ground handler on the airline’s behalf) and file a Property Irregularity Report, known as a PIR.

The PIR is the foundation of everything that follows. It records the flight, the bag tag number, a description of the bag, and your contact details. It also generates a reference number you’ll use for tracking and for any later claim.

Make sure you do these three things:

1. Get the PIR reference number in writing before you leave the desk.
2. Check that the bag tag number on the report matches the sticky receipt you were given at check-in.
3. Ask which tracing system the airline uses and where you can check the status online. Most major carriers use WorldTracer.

Warning: Some airlines treat a missing PIR as grounds to reject a claim outright. Filing online from home is possible with many carriers, but a report made at the airport, timestamped on arrival, is much harder for an airline to dispute.

Keep Every Scrap of Paper

Your claim will live or die on documentation. So, before you do anything else, gather and photograph:

• The checked baggage tag receipt from check-in
• Your boarding pass and booking confirmation
• The PIR and its reference number
• Receipts for anything you buy while the bag is missing

Store the photos in cloud storage, not just on your phone. Claims drag on for weeks, and a lost phone should not mean a lost claim.

Buy Essentials, But Keep Expenses Reasonable

Under the Montreal Convention, which governs checked baggage on international flights between its member states, airlines are liable for damage caused by baggage delay. In practice, that means they should repay you for any reasonable essential purchases for things like toiletries, underwear, a phone charger, or a change of clothes appropriate to your trip.

The word that matters the most here is reasonable. A modest outfit will be reimbursed without argument, but a designer replacement wardrobe will not. Some airlines offer a flat daily allowance instead, so ask the desk agent what their policy is, and get the answer in writing.

Keep every receipt. Airlines reimburse documented expenses, not estimates.

Track the Bag Yourself

Don’t wait for the airline to call you with updates. Do this instead:

1. Check the airline’s baggage tracing system using your PIR reference number
2. Enable notifications in the airline’s app if it offers baggage tracking
3. Call the baggage line once per day and note the date, time, and name of who you spoke to

Tip: If you travel with a personal baggage tracking device in your checked bag, share its location with the airline. Carriers have reunited bags in days that their own systems had lost entirely, purely because the passenger could point to a map.

Put Your Claim in Writing, and Watch the Deadlines

This is where most passengers lose money. A PIR is a tracing report, not a legal claim. The Montreal Convention sets strict deadlines for the written complaint that actually preserves your rights:

Baggage Compensation Limits & How to Claim

The liability limit for baggage mishandling is 1,519 Special Drawing Rights per passenger, which is a little over US$2,000 at current exchange rates. The ICAO raised the limit from 1,288 SDR on 28 December 2024, so beware of airlines’ quoting the older, lower figure. You can claim above the cap only if you completed a special declaration of value when you checked the bag in.

Send the written claim by email to the airline’s baggage claims address, reference your PIR number, and keep a copy. If your itinerary includes a US domestic flight, US Department of Transportation rules apply with a higher liability cap of US$4,700.

Where to Get Help if the Airline Stalls

Airlines pay out on some baggage claims without a fight. However, some common tactics to reduce your payout include lowball offers based on heavy depreciation, demands for original purchase receipts for years-old belongings, and simply going quiet until your deadlines pass.

You can absolutely submit a claim yourself, and for a bag returned within a day or two, you should. But if your bag is gone for good, or the airline has stopped replying, or gives you an unreasonably low offer, it’s best to consult a specialist like BagHelp. Their legal team can help with a lost baggage claim and they work on a no-win, no-fee basis which means you pay nothing unless you get the money you’re owed.

Either way, act within the deadlines above. No service can revive a claim that expired because the written complaint went in late.

What You Can Claim For a Lost Bag

Once the 21 days have passed or the airline says your luggage is lost, build your claim as follows:

• List every item in the your suitcase with its purchase date and price if you have the information
• Attach receipts, bank statements, or even photos of you wearing the items where receipts don’t exist
• Include the value bag itself
• Add the receipts for any essential purchases you made while waiting.

Expect the airline to apply depreciation to used items, but push back where the deduction is unreasonable; a one-year-old coat has not lost 70% of its value.

One hard truth: Most airline conditions of carriage exclude liability for cash, jewellery, electronics, and documents in checked baggage. If those were in your bag, your claim for them rests on travel insurance, not the airline. 

Why the First Day Decides the Whole Claim

Every one of these protections, the essentials reimbursement, the lost-bag payout, the leverage to challenge a lowball offer, traces back to evidence created in the first 24 hours. The PIR proves you reported it, the receipts prove what the delay cost you, and the written claim, sent inside the deadline, keeps your legal rights alive.