Airline Lost Your Bag? Don’t Settle For A $50 Voucher — You Can Claim Up To $4,700

There’s a viral twitter thread on making sure you get the compensation due when an airline loses your bags, though it gets some of the facts wrong. It’s worth laying this out correctly because there’s useful information here, because there are four different kinds of compensation people seek for lost luggage. They get conflated and you should know how all of them work.

• short-term expenses while you’re without your bags, to cover things like toiletries and clothes you need to wear
  
• payment when they actually lose your bags rather than just delay delivery
  
• getting your checked bag fees back, because they didn’t earn the money if they failed to deliver your luggage on time
  
• Additional customer relations compensation

The airline lost my bag for 72 hours.

They handed me a $50 “courtesy” voucher at the baggage desk and smiled like they’d done me a favor.

I kept the voucher. Then I opened my laptop and used a 1999 international treaty they never mention at check-in.

Total recovered: $1,650.…

— Swati Gupta (@hrswatigupta) May 27, 2026

While your bag is delayed, you’re going to need to buy clothes, toiletries, maybe a charger for your phone, etc. Under U.S. Department of Transportation rules (and the Montreal Convention for international flights) the carrier is going to be liable for actual, reasonable, documented losses caused by the delayed bag. This can even included the need to rent sports equipment if you’d checked those and they didn’t make it.

Once the bag is actually lost, you can claim the value of the bag itself as well as its contents – usually at their depreciated value – up to the liability ceiling. Airlines can require receipts or other proof for valuable items.

One thing that the discussion on twitter gets wrong though is that a bag that’s been missing for 72 hours is usually still considered delayed and not lost. Most airlines declare a bag lost between five and fourteen days. For international travel under the Montreal Convention you can treat a bag as lost after 21 days – or earlier if the airline considers the bag lost.

• For most international itineraries, Montreal Convention liability currently lost luggage at ~ $2,175. (The twitter thread’s ~ $1,500 figure is outdated.)

• For U.S. domestic flights, the baggage liability ceiling is actually $4,700 per passenger for lost, delayed, or damaged bags.

Separately, for U.S. domestic and international flights, DOT rules require the airline to refund checked baggage fees when the bag is lost or significantly delayed (12 hours for domestic flights and 15 hours for international flights although for international flights over 12 hours the standard is 15 hours).

Separate from luggage, if you’re departing the U.K. or E.U. or traveling on a airline based in one of those places you may be entitled to EU261/UK261 cash compensation for a flight cancellation or arrival delay over 3 or more hours. There is no similar U.S. requirement. However, even without a legal hammer, airlines may offer goodwill compensation – travel credits for a future purchase to bring you back as a customer, or miles to keep you engaged in the program despite the bad experience.

A few things to consider:

• Don’t leave the airport without filing a missing bag (unless the airline expressly allows online reporting)
  
• Don’t sign or accept anything labeled “full and final settlement” unless that’s actually the full amount you’re looking for. A voucher may not be ‘full and final’ but it’s important to read what you’re writing/using/cashing.
  
• Unlike this twitter thread, don’t confuse the liability cap with what you’re entitled to. $2,175 and $4,700 are maximums, but you must prove the actual loss.
  
• Jewelry, electronics, cameras, cash, documents, eyewear, medical devices, and business property may be excluded from coverage.

But you aren’t just dependent on the airline for all of this. If you buy travel insurance, look to them to cover. If you use a premium rewards credit card to buy your airline tickets, that may offer coverage as well. Award tickets get a bit complicated with credit card coverage (Chase is relatively friendly with their baggage delay coverage which generally applies when you pay a portion of the fare with the eligible card, while Amex may exclude redemption of airline miles(, That said, you aren’t supposed to double dip, with the card reimbursing only what the airline won’t.

In general, Chase’s Sapphire and Ink Business Preferred cards along with World of Hyatt offer strong coverage, e.g. $100/day for up to 5 days after a delay over 6 hours, plus lost luggage reimbursement up to $3,000 per covered traveler on the Sapphire cards.

Citi Strata Elite has the highest lost or damaged luggage value cap I’m aware of at up to $5,000 per covered trip.