Member-only story
Business class baggage disaster! Why is Aer Lingus ghosting us?
For their 50th anniversary trip to Europe, Jack and Leslie Hamann splurged on business class tickets on Aer Lingus. They got business class treatment. Their luggage? Not so much, and their Aer Lingus lost luggage compensation fight was just beginning.
Their Aer Lingus itinerary from Redmond, Ore., to Brussels via San Francisco and Dublin was supposed to be the beginning of a three-week European getaway. Instead, it became a six-month odyssey through customer service purgatory.
The Hamanns’ story is about more than just lost luggage. It’s about an airline that made promise after promise, then systematically broke every one. It’s about a company that admitted liability, agreed to pay compensation, then vanished when payment came due.
This case raises several important questions:
- What happens when an airline repeatedly fails to load your tracked baggage onto flights?
- Can airlines ignore their own written promises to compensate passengers?
- How long should customers wait before seeking outside help with unresolved claims?
But first, let me tell you how this nightmare began, and why it took a consumer advocate to finally wake up a sleeping airline.
