Geneva airport, vacation week
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A very small number of Geneva airport’s Swissport baggage handlers remain on strike after lengthy negotiations with cantonal officials failed to bring about a settlement by 8 January. Airline passengers took little interest in the striket, faced with their own concerns about lost bags and missed flights: bags misplaced a week ago have still not all been found and UK weather forced scores of flights to be canceled.
GenevaLunch has been flooded with e-mails and comments on our articles about the chaos at the airport 2-3 January, which resulted in thousands of bags going missing for most of the week.
For those who have still not received their bags, or who were bumped from canceled flights to the UK, due to weather, this week, Swiss law provides the same compensation as European Union law. Details are available in German, French and Italian, the national languages, on a federal government site. Key points include:
- The airline is responsible for damage to your luggage, including missing items, or for luggage that is still missing after 21 days. Important note – Damaged goods: you must file a report with the airline within 7 days of receiving the bag. Lost bags must be declared within 7 days. Damages are limited to DTS1,000. DTS is a variable sum fixed for airlines worldwide, with the most recent figure listed for Switzerland 1DTS-CHF1.85 (date, 2007). The Swiss ombudsman office handles unresolved disputes.
- If your flight was canceled or delayed more than 4 hours the airline must offer you either a reimbursement of your ticket or an alternative flight to your destination, and the company is responsible for giving you food and drink and, if necessary, a hotel. The amount the company must cover for these depends on the distance of the flight. Details (Fre)
- Passengers who booked a package with an agency are entitled to compensation, with details in the contract. Swiss law, however, goes further than EU law, which refers to “reasonable limits”: if your package was sold through an EU or Swiss company or part of the package is in Switzerland, the limit for what the company must cover is twice the value of the package.
Background stories on Geneva Airport strike, baggage problems (plus comments)
This work by genevalunch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
News story, GenevaLunch, 9 January 2010.
Filed under: Travel
Tags: compensation, Geneva airport, lost baggage, luggage, missed flights, ombudsman, package tours, strike, Switzerland
January 10th, 2010 at 7:57 am
We lost 10 bags. Five bags were returned to me on Day 3. Two bags were scheduled to be returned on Day 4 but the courier did not show up. On day 5, the rest of the 5 bags arrived and I think they skipped the scheduled dropoff on Day 4 so they could save themselves 1 trip because they knew more bags were coming the next day. If so, that’s not right as it’s their duty to deliver the bags as fast as possible and they had already scheduled a drop off. The least they could do was phone and let us know they weren’t coming that evening so we wouldn’t be fretting in vain the whole evening.
Air Canada’s website put up a travel advisory to say that world tracer baggage tracing system may not be accurate or up to date due to unusually high traffic. This notice was put up Jan 4th. We lost our baggage Jan 2nd.
One thing that really bothered me through this process is that a Swissport agent phoned us regarding the first drop off and we missed the call that morning. My husband phoned back and the call was immediately picked up. When the courier did a “no show”, my husband phoned the number back and it rang and rang but no one picked up. It seems they only pick up when they want to. I then SMSed a message to ask why the courier did not show up. I don’t know if the text message got through but it was worth a shot. No reply. Later on, I SMSed another message and this message definitely did not get through as I got an error message back. Makes me think someone is turning off their text messenging too.
Allowing people to check in and fly without warning them that there is a strike is irreprehensible. Is there not anything in the Warsaw Convention covering this? It’s no different than stealing someone’s possessions knowing they are going to arrive at their destination without their belongings. People should be given a CHOICE whether to continue with their travel plans or holidays. You are separating people from their medication possibly. Not everyone remembers that they are not supposed to check in their medication. Also, we have a family member that takes inhalers due to asthma. These are not allowed to be carried on the flight except for 1 inhaler. The balance of the inhalers are checked in. What about those people whose bulk of medication is checked in because of these strict rules about what can be carried on board and what can not? I can see why the airlines are losing money nowadays because they’ve made it virtually impossible for people to fly any more. All these strict baggage rules and now I find out they have no qualms about letting you on board but leaving your bags behind.
We arrived at Geneva airport around 2 pm on Saturday–the first day of the strike. The baggage claim area was mayhem. There were NO announcements given over the speakers what was happening. People had to find out by themselves by talking to fellow passengers. I read a quote here on these blog reports from some official person form the airport (sorry forgot his name) that implied that it was only English announcements that were lacking. Actually, there were no announcements in ANY language and that was already 5 pm on Saturday. By the time we left that place, it was 5 pm. Very unprofessional! I hope they’ve addressed this problem of leaving their customers in the dark by now—days into the strike!
I complained to Air Canada about what happened. They finally emailed back after 6 days to offer a profuse apology about Swissport–those they’ve contracted to handle their baggage. They acknowledged that usually people don’t have these many troubles with lost baggage. We lost ALL TEN bags. No extra offer of compensation beyond their standard compensation even though these circumstances were way beyond standard troubles.
My ordeal is for the most part over, since I’m happy that all 10 pieces were finally returned. Some of the luggage (including 1 brand new piece) are shockingly damaged. I’m too exhausted to chase them up for compensation for broken luggage.
Good luck to all those still waiting for their luggage.
Thank you for giving me this platform to vent. As for me, I’m happy to move on now and start enjoying our new life here in Switzerland. Apart from this baggage ordeal, everything else has been very pleasant and positive. We ran out and bought clothes in uniform colors for the first day of school when we found out our luggage was lost. Now, my children have enough clothing in school uniform colors to last for the next 4 years since the old bags were returned.
January 13th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Hi there,
Please can somebody help! What an absolute nightmare……
I’ve still not got my bag back, there was 6 of us who checked all of our bags in together as a group on Saturday 2nd January 2010 at Geneva airport only to be told then that the bag handlers had gone on strike, we were then given 6 tags for all of our bags all under 1 name. So each of us were not given our own unique reference number? So my friend Ray was given all 6 different numbers for ALL of our bags. We were on the Manchester flight back to the UK around mid-day on Sat 2nd
Today Ray just by chance was at home when the courier delivered his snow boarding bag but somebody else’s suitcase? the worse part about this is that this random suitcase had Ray’s name & address on it? so I’m worried along with the rest of my friends that if we are getting other peoples belongings then where are our bags goping to?? When Ray questions the delivery driver about this error, the delivery person said apparently they are only given names and adresses where to deliver these goods…. there are 4 different couriers involved in delivering everybody’s bags? Absolute chaos
So my question is by chance has anybody got a Grey Umbro holdall?
Claire Morris
January 13th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Hurray
I’ve now received my bag (The Grey Umbro Holdall). There was more than one delivery today in the end so up to now all 6 of us have got our luggage back (suitcases with clothes in etc) we are just waiting for 2 snowboarding bags and 1 pair of ski’s
Sorry -the suitcase above that I mentioned in my last comment did in the end belong to one of my friends…..so I don’t want to panic people, bags are now being dropped off
Good luck to everybody waiting for there belongings:)
January 13th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Bravo!
January 14th, 2010 at 8:39 am
It’s good to hear that some people are getting their bags back. I was told that RICO were the couriers but I cannot get hold of them on one number and a promise via a different telephone number to call me back never happened!
I have now had to buy duplicate items and there is a good chance that a courier will turn up when I’m away again!
A total shambles on the part of Thomsons.
January 14th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
We were on the Thomson Manchester flight from Geneva on 2nd January.
I can only say – total mayhem !!!
I have been ringing round all week and spent the best part of £15 in calls at 10p a minute – what a joke !!!
One bag has been delivered on Monday after getting a call from courier – other 3 still awaited.
two are apparently with Rico (skis and snowboard) but they arent answering the phone – that is a common thread throughout this fiasco !
Other bag is “missing” – which had been closed down on the PIR form we completed as not found. After eventually getting through to the T2 handling dept a very helpful guy reopened the PIR and said ring back Friday as there are over 10000 bags involved in this episode.
We await the 3 bags – hopefully before we go again in March
January 14th, 2010 at 10:21 pm
We’ve published several articles on this, and there are comments on each of them. If you want to check other articles, here is the list: http://genevalunch.com/index.php?s=geneva+airport+baggage&x=1&y=6