Luggage Lost, Delayed, or Damaged by the Airline? How to Claim Compensation (UK)

You land after a long flight, wait at the carousel, and your bag never appears — or it turns up two days later, or comes back with a wheel snapped off and the zip burst. Airlines are quick to hand you a claim form and quicker to talk down what they owe. But for the vast majority of international flights, the airline's liability for your checked baggage is set by an international treaty — the Montreal Convention 1999 — and it is far more generous, and far less discretionary, than a check-in agent may let on. Here is how the rules work, how much you can claim, the strict deadlines that catch people out, and what to put in writing.

The Montreal Convention: The Airline Is Liable for Your Baggage

The Montreal Convention 1999 governs the liability of international air carriers, and the UK is a party to it. It applies to flights between two countries that are both signatories, and to most international journeys to, from, or connecting through the UK. Under it, the airline is liable for the loss, delay, or damage of checked baggage — and your claim is against the airline (the carrier you flew with), not the airport or the ground-handling company that actually moved your bag.

Crucially, for checked baggage the airline's liability is close to strict: it is liable for damage or loss whether or not it was at fault, unless it can prove the damage resulted from an inherent defect or the natural condition of the baggage itself. For hand baggage you kept with you, the position is different — the airline is only liable if the damage was actually its fault.

How Much You Can Claim: The Compensation Limit

The Convention caps the airline's liability for baggage — covering destruction, loss, damage, and delay combined — at 1,519 Special Drawing Rights (SDR) per passenger (this limit is reviewed every five years for inflation; it rose from 1,288 SDR to 1,519 SDR on 28 December 2024). The SDR is an international unit of account set by the IMF, and its value in pounds moves daily with exchange rates; 1,519 SDR is broadly in the region of £1,600, but you should check the current SDR-to-sterling rate at the time you claim rather than treat any single figure as fixed. This is a per-passenger limit, not per bag.

Within that ceiling you claim your actual loss — you are not automatically entitled to the full limit, but to what you can reasonably show you lost or spent. Keep receipts for the contents of a lost bag and for anything you had to buy because a delayed bag left you without essentials.

Lost vs Delayed: When a Late Bag Becomes a Lost One

Airlines rarely declare a bag "lost" straight away — they treat it as delayed while they try to trace it. In practice, if your bag has not turned up after a prolonged period (commonly around 21 days), it is generally treated as lost, and you can claim for its full value rather than just your interim expenses. While a bag is merely delayed, you can claim the reasonable cost of essential replacements — toiletries, a change of clothes, and the like — that you had to buy because you were left without your things. Keep every receipt.

Declaring a Higher Value

If you are travelling with baggage worth more than the standard limit, the Convention lets you make a special declaration of interest at check-in and pay a supplementary fee. If you do, the airline's liability rises to the higher declared amount. For genuinely valuable items this is worth doing — and as a rule, high-value items, medication, and essentials are far better carried in your hand luggage than checked into the hold.

The Overall Time Limit to Take Action

Separate from the 7-day and 21-day notice deadlines, there is a hard two-year limitation period to bring a court claim: it runs from the date the aircraft arrived, or the date it should have arrived. Report and complain quickly to preserve your claim — but if the airline drags things out, be aware that the right to sue is lost two years after arrival, and that clock does not stop just because you are still exchanging emails.

Baggage Compensation Is Not the Same as Flight-Delay Compensation

It is easy to confuse two separate rights. If your flight was delayed or cancelled, you may be owed flight-delay compensation under the UK261 rules — a fixed sum based on the length of the delay and the distance flown. That is entirely distinct from a baggage claim under the Montreal Convention, which is about your bag being lost, delayed, or damaged. The two do not overlap: a delayed flight and a delayed bag are different problems with different remedies, and you can, in principle, have a claim for both arising from the same journey.

Purely Domestic UK Flights

The Montreal Convention is about international carriage. A purely domestic UK flight — say, London to Edinburgh with no international leg — is generally governed by the airline's own conditions of carriage rather than the Convention, though many carriers apply Convention-style limits to domestic baggage claims anyway. If your journey was international at any point (including a connecting international flight on the same ticket), the Convention route is the one to rely on. Check your airline's conditions of carriage for a domestic-only trip.

What to Put in Writing

A clear, prompt written complaint is what turns a brush-off at the desk into a paid claim. Your letter or claim should:

• Identify the flight — airline, flight number, date, and route — and your booking and baggage reference (including any Property Irregularity Report number);
• State clearly whether the bag was lost, delayed, or damaged, and the key dates — when you flew, and when the bag was returned (if it was);
• Make plain that you are claiming under the Montreal Convention 1999, and that you are within the 7-day (damage) or 21-day (delay) notice period;
• Set out your loss with figures, attach receipts for contents and for essential replacement purchases, and state the amount you are claiming; and
• Give the airline a reasonable date to respond, and keep copies of everything.