A missing bag turns a twenty-minute walk through arrivals into an hour at a desk. Here is what happens to the driver waiting outside, and what to do first.
You land, you reach the belt, and the bags come out one by one until they stop coming. Yours is not among them.
It is not a disaster, but it changes your arrival completely — and if someone is waiting to drive you into the city, it changes theirs too.
File the Report Before You Leave the Baggage Hall
This is the part people get wrong, and it is the only part that is hard to undo.
Airlines generally expect a missing bag to be reported while you are still in the baggage reclaim area, at the airline's own desk. Walk out through customs first and you have made the claim considerably harder for yourself. Whatever else is going through your mind, find the desk before you find the exit.
You will be given a reference number. Keep it. Everything afterwards runs on that number.
Tell Us Straight Away
Message us as soon as you know. Not when you finish at the desk — when you join the queue.
Here is why it matters. We wait one hour and thirty minutes after your flight lands. That window is generous for a normal arrival: passport control, bags, the walk out. It is not generous if you spend forty minutes at a baggage desk first.
One message changes that. We can tell the driver to sit tight, or move the pickup, and nothing about your booking is at risk. Silence is the only thing that causes a problem, because from outside, a passenger who has not appeared looks the same whether they are at a desk or still on the plane.
What Happens Next
Most delayed bags turn up within a day or two and are delivered to the address you gave the airline. Give them the hotel, not your home address.
If you are moving on — to a cruise, to another city — say so at the desk. The delivery address they write down is the one they will use, and a bag sent to a hotel you have already left is a second problem on top of the first.
The Thing Worth Doing Before You Fly
Pack one change of clothes, your medication and your chargers in your hand luggage. It is advice everybody has heard and almost nobody follows, and it is the difference between an inconvenience and a ruined first day.
In Short
Report it before you leave the baggage hall, message us the moment you join the queue, and give the airline your hotel address rather than your home one. Your driver is not going anywhere — but we can only hold the car if we know you are still inside.
