Ask Gadling: What to do when the airline loses your luggage? {Gadling}

Aug 18th 2010 10:12AM You forgot a major step. You have to get authorization from the airline BEFORE you make any purchases to replace delayed or lost luggage. Simply submitting a claim after does not work (she says from experience). American Airlines lost my luggage the first 3 days of my conference so I had to buy new everything to show up at the conference in something other than my travelling sweats. When I submitted my receipts a week later, I was told "you can't just go out and BUY things, you have to get an authorization FIRST." No one had told me anything, and I'd spoken to 5 different people trying to track my bags, sometimes 2-3 times a day. I wrote letters and called to try and appeal and was told in no uncertain terms "too bad."