How many times has a airplane delay of one or more hours? How many times have you seen cancel your flight from the departures board? Finally, how many times have there been discrimination or oversights that seemed to you not to be serious? All these things have happened to me a few times… yes, even the cancellation of the flight unfortunately (I was in the Caribbean).
How to behave in these cases? The first thing to do is to contact the airport and the company with which you bought the flight, only them you can contact. But in what way? What can you ask, what can you expect?
Not everyone knows that passenger rights exist and that they can be claimed in case of disruption of air transport. If you look carefully you will find them in every airport in the world, they are blue brochures (in Italy) that explain in detail how to behave in case of flight delay, lost luggage and other inefficiencies. The brochures are distributed by ENAC, National Civil Aviation Authority drawn up for the first time in 2001. But let's get to the most interesting and useful things for us.
Passenger rights in case of failure to deliver or damage baggage. In the event of non-delivery or damage to the checked baggage (therefore with an identification tag), upon arrival, a loss or damage report must be opened, noting the event before leaving the baggage reclaim area, at the Lost and Found offices of the 'airport of arrival, by filling in the forms called PIR (Property Irregularity Report).
Loss. If within 21 days of completing the PIR you are not given any news about the discovery, you must send all the documentation to start the compensation procedure.
Finding. If your baggage is found within 21 days from the effective date of loss, send the documentation for the initiation of the compensation procedure for any expenses incurred.
Necessary documentation to be sent for both cases described above. The documentation must be sent to the Customer Relations Office and / or to the Baggage Assistance of the airline with which you traveled. You must send:
- flight booking code in case of online purchase or the original one in case of paper ticket
- original of the PIR issued at the airport
- original baggage identification tag and proof of any excess baggage payment
- a list of the contents of the baggage in case the baggage is lost
- a list of any missing content in case of luggage found and the originals of the receipts and tax receipts showing the type of goods purchased to replace the personal effects contained in the luggage
- complete bank details: name and address of the bank, IBAN, ABI, CAB, current account number, SWIFT code in the case of a foreign account and name of the current account holder. If the data does not refer to the holder of the practice, it is also necessary to specify the residential address, telephone number and email address.
Damage. In case of damage to the baggage within i 7 days after completing the PIR, all the documentation specified below must be sent to the Customer Relations and / or Baggage Assistance Office of the airline with which you traveled in order to initiate the compensation procedure. Below is the necessary documentation:
- the flight booking code in case of online purchase or the original one in case of paper ticket
- original of the PIR issued at the airport
- original baggage identification tag
- the list of the contents of the baggage that may have been damaged
In case of damage, loss or non-delivery of baggage on passenger is entitled to compensation of up to 1000 DPS (Special Drawing Rights), about 1000 €, from the airlines of the European Union and the countries that adhere to the Montreal Convention up to 17 SDRs (about € 17) per kg from the airlines of the countries that adhere to the Warsaw Convention, unless the passenger has taken out supplementary insurance .
