Airline havoc and lost luggage become major headache for cruise-goers
With airlines across the globe making headlines for delays, losing passengers’ luggage, and a host of other issues, it might seem that going on a cruise would be a safer option.
But many cruise-goers have faced even more significant problems as a result of waylaid luggage, with some telling Business Insider that they had to choose whether to stay at the airport to find out what happened to their luggage or make it in time for their cruise boarding time.
For Ed Perry and his wife, who flew from North Carolina to Amsterdam for a two-week cruise to Budapest and Hungary, flight delays, route changes and having to check their hand luggage resulted in both their carry-on bags and their hold luggage being lost.
“It was a disaster from start to finish,” Mr Perry told Insider.
He added that he and his wife couldn’t shop for clothes when their ship docked because they’d paid for excursions, but that other passengers stepped in to lend them clothes.
Todd McCloud Jr said losing his luggage after last-minute flight changes “put a dampener on our whole trip”.
He said a staff member told him his bags would arrive on another flight and be taken straight to the port where his family’s cruise around the Caribbean would be departing from, but that the bags ultimately never arrived.
“I’m lucky that I didn’t put our birth certificates in those bags or else we wouldn’t have been able to go on that cruise at all,” Mr McCloud said.
Fortunately, his bags were waiting for him when he returned to the airport, along with a voucher and a cheque from Southwest, the airline he flew with, to cover the cost of the replacement items he purchased during the trip
Other passengers shared how their luggage was lost during layovers, with some bags being passed between multiple airports as airlines tried to follow cruise itineraries to match up the luggage with their rightful owners.
Thomas Hatch, who was meant to arrive in Rome for a 10-day Celebrity Cruises trip around Europe, said a total of eight bags belonging to him and three other passengers failed to arrive in time.
British Airways staff told Mr Hatch that the luggage would be flown to Rome on a later flight, but the flight’s cancellation resulted in six of the bags being sent to Athens the day before Mr Hatch’s ship docked there.
Despite matching his itinerary, Mr Hatch said the airport was “overwhelmed” with luggage and wouldn’t let the ship's porter collect the bags.
He said two of his bags were sent to Thessaloniki Airport in Greece, despite the ship never stopping there.
Another passenger, who wished to remain anonymous so as not to jeopardise her chances of compensation, shared photos of luggage tags from her bag, which showed the airline apparently sent it to four European airlines in failed attempts to match up with her cruise.
While passengers said they struggled to get help from the airlines, cruise lines went out of their way to be of assistance.
Mr Perry said Viking “bent over backwards for us”, with staff lending him their mobile phones so he could call Air Canada, who he said were difficult to reach during the trip and never offered to send his luggage to other ports.
Zoe Greenberg had a similar experience to Mr Perry, sharing that Air Canada was “impossible to reach” despite her calling them daily and her husband spending three-and-a-half hours on hold on one occasion.
“They had no idea where our bags were,” she said.
On the other hand, both Mr Perry and Ms Greenberg said their cruise lines also waived laundry fees during their trip.
When she arrived back at Barcelona airport, Ms Greenberg said her husband found her luggage in a storage room “with thousands of bags” but that he didn’t receive his until 26 days after their trip.
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