Delayed, Lost or Damaged Baggage: How to Claim Compensation

Baggage is governed by the Montreal Convention, not EU261

This is the single most important thing to understand. The famous EU261 rules (Regulation 261/2004) cover flight delays, cancellations and denied boarding. They do not cover your luggage at all. Baggage is handled by a separate international treaty called the Montreal Convention of 1999.

Inside the EU, the Montreal Convention is given legal effect by Regulation (EC) 889/2002, so the same rules apply whether you flew Lisbon to Paris or Paris to New York on a Convention airline. The practical difference is huge: EU261 pays fixed, automatic amounts, while baggage claims are not fixed. You must prove your actual losses with receipts and documents.

How much can you claim

The Montreal Convention caps the airline's liability for delayed, lost or damaged checked baggage at about 1,288 Special Drawing Rights (SDR) per passenger. The SDR is an international currency unit set by the IMF, and its value floats daily, so treat the cap as approximate: roughly 1,500 to 1,700 euros, or about 1,700 to 1,900 US dollars.

This figure was last revised in 2019, and the SDR exchange rate changes constantly, so always check the current SDR rate before assuming a final number. The cap is the maximum, not a guaranteed payout. You will only receive what you can actually prove you lost or spent, up to that ceiling.

Step one: file a PIR before you leave the airport

Before you walk out of the arrivals hall, go to the airline or ground-handler baggage desk and file a Property Irregularity Report (PIR). This is the official record that something went wrong, and most airlines will refuse a later claim if no PIR exists.

Get a copy of the PIR with its reference number, and photograph the document and any damage. The PIR is not the claim itself; it simply opens the file. You still have to submit a written compensation claim afterward, within the deadlines below.

Delayed baggage: the 21-day rule

If your bag turns up late, you can claim reasonable expenses for essential replacement items you had to buy while waiting, such as toiletries, underwear and a change of clothes. Keep every receipt. Airlines reimburse what is reasonable for the length of the delay and the nature of your trip, not a luxury shopping spree.

The key deadline is strict: once you receive your delayed bag, you must file a written claim within 21 days. Miss it and the airline can legally refuse you. Submit the claim with your PIR reference, your receipts, your boarding pass and your booking reference.

• Keep all receipts for emergency purchases
• Buy reasonable essentials, not designer replacements
• Note the date and time your bag was finally returned
• Submit the written claim within 21 days of getting the bag back

Damaged baggage: report within 7 days

If your suitcase arrives broken, cracked, torn or with damaged contents, you have a much shorter window. You must report the damage to the airline in writing within 7 days of receiving the bag. Photograph the damage immediately and keep the baggage tags.

Note that normal wear and tear, minor scuffs, and damage to fragile or improperly packed items may be excluded. For a destroyed bag, you can claim repair costs or the depreciated value of the case and its contents, again up to the overall Convention cap.

Lost baggage: when delayed becomes lost

There is no fixed cut-off in the treaty, but a bag is generally treated as lost after about 21 days without being located. At that point your claim changes: instead of interim expenses, you claim the full value of the bag and its contents, up to the roughly 1,288 SDR cap per passenger.

Itemise everything that was inside with honest, current values, and provide proof where you can, such as purchase receipts or photos. High-value items like jewellery or electronics are often where airlines push back, so documentation matters most there.

If you flew to or from the United States

US Department of Transportation rules add protections on top of the Convention. If your checked bag is declared lost, the airline must refund the checked-bag fee you paid. For delayed bags, airlines must reimburse reasonable, verifiable interim expenses while you wait, and they cannot set an arbitrarily low daily cap that fails to cover genuine needs.

As with everything in baggage claims, this is not fixed compensation. You prove your losses, you keep your receipts, and you claim what you actually spent.

Claim service or travel insurance: which makes sense

You can file a baggage claim yourself for free, and for a straightforward delayed-bag receipt claim that is usually the fastest, cheapest route. A no-win-no-fee claim service typically keeps around 25 to 35 percent of any payout, so it only makes sense when the amount is large and the airline is stonewalling or disputing liability.

Travel insurance is the other route, and it often pays out faster and sometimes more generously than the airline, especially for lost high-value items. The catch is you must have bought the policy before the trip. A practical approach in 2026: file the PIR and airline claim, and run a parallel insurance claim if you have cover, but never claim the same loss twice.

How this differs from flight-delay compensation

Remember that baggage and flight disruption are two completely separate claims under two different sets of rules. If your flight was also delayed by three hours or more, cancelled, or you were denied boarding, you may be owed a separate fixed EU261 payout of 250 to 600 euros on top of anything you recover for your bag.

Those flight-disruption claims are covered in detail in our delayed-flight and how-to-claim guides. You can pursue both at the same time; one does not cancel out the other.