Travel questions

Help! Is there any way I can recover my lost luggage?

Simon Calder answers your questions on dealing with missing suitcases, finding the best bang for your buck, and those ongoing airport queues

Monday 11 April 2022 21:30 BST

Where’s mine? Checking in bags always involves a risk (Getty)

Q We are currently in Australia. We flew with British Airways from the dreaded Heathrow Terminal 5 to Copenhagen before travelling on to Australia with Qatar Airways. On arrival at Copenhagen we found out that no luggage whatsoever had been loaded onto our flight. We completed the necessary missing bag forms with the address in Australia. BA’s tracking system tells us bags were found and placed on flights to arrive in Australia on 6 April. The flights arrived but no sign of our luggage. To date, we still haven’t had any response, still have no luggage and I’m fuming at how bad BA customer service is. Is there anything you can suggest we do?

“Stribs 22”

A Sorry to read about your experience. Sometimes when bags go astray the reuniting process can threaten to dominate the trip. On the rare occasions when it has happened to me, I would really rather not spend time online or on the phone trying to find where the bag is and coordinating reunification with it. Rather than chasing around for them, I ask the airline to return the missing luggage after the trip. I also explain that I will buy the minimum to meet my travel needs (keeping the receipts for a later claim).

Checking in bags always involves a risk, though yours evidently fell at the first hurdle and were left behind at Heathrow. Had you been travelling only on British Airways, you could have avoided any such problems by taking everything you need as cabin baggage; the airline has an extremely generous 46kg, two-piece hand luggage allowance. By taking advantage of this, as I invariably do, you can avoid the risk that your possessions will be misrouted or just left behind at Heathrow.

But I see that you were taking a fairly exotic routing, transferring to Qatar Airways in Copenhagen – presumably because of a good-value fare. The Qatar Airways allowance is a paltry single piece weighing 7kg. In practice many people take much more than this, but not as much as British Airways would allow. Anyway, I hope you did the sensible thing – which is to assume you will never see your checked baggage again, and avoiding packing anything that you would be upset not to see again.

Calling in at a series of bureau de change will see you right (AP)

Q My husband and I hope to fly to the US next week (providing, of course, that the flights aren’t cancelled). Could you please recommend the best way to get US dollars? We’ve read that one gets the best rates from ATMs over there, rather than by ordering them from UK banks or the Post Office. Is this so?

Suz D

A Until the pandemic I was always keen to use cash as my main form of spending, but much has changed and many places now say “cards only”. Certainly, the most useful thing you can do, if you have time before you go, is to apply for a Halifax Clarity credit card. It will give you excellent, no-transaction-fee rates on plastic payments.

Anyway, to address your question: I can tell you the method I use for finding the best deals for foreign currency, but I fear you may not like it. I would never use an ATM in the US – rates, I find, are poor, and there are usually significant charges involved. So instead I buy in London. I generally start at the southern end of Queensway, a kind of high street in Bayswater, west London, and call in at the series of bureau de change that are on both sides of the street. My question is: “How much, in sterling, will it cost to buy $500?” (Or, if I am heading for Europe, euros.)

The responses vary wildly, but there is always one that will get you close to the middle rate. Today that is $1.30 to £1, so I would be looking for $1.28 – in other words, paying £390. (By the way, the change firms I deal with all want sterling in cash, not plastic.)

If your travel plans do not include trawling for the best rate, let me recommend Thomas Exchange Global, located inside Hammersmith Broadway Shopping Centre. Book online with “click and collect” and you can get close to that middle rate.

Should that excursion also not appeal, then book through the currency provider Travelex – paying in advance and collecting at a specified bureau de change at Heathrow.

Passengers meander their way through Stansted airport arrivals (Simon Calder)

Q I am travelling to Turkey on 22 May from Stansted. Will the queue problem be sorted by then?

“Turkey Holidays”

A In the past few weeks long queues for security at a number of airports, including Manchester, Birmingham and London Stansted, have caused problems for passengers ranging from frustration to actually missing planes – often with very expensive consequences.

The highest number of travellers appears to be at Manchester airport. Last Friday the chief executive of Manchester Airports Group, Charlie Cornish, admitted frankly: “We don’t currently have the number of staff we need to provide the level of service that our passengers deserve.

“For now, we are advising passengers to arrive at the airport three hours before their flight leaves.”

Stansted airport is part of the same group, and is experiencing similar problems: with passenger numbers soaring in a tight labour market, hiring people quickly enough to establish a full-strength team in the airport security operation is tough.

There has been a very obvious lag between the reappearance of strong demand for aviation – which was triggered by the ending of travel restrictions in the UK – and the supply of trained and vetted staff.

However, I conducted a wide-ranging (if unscientific) social media survey over the weekend and was heartened to see that most passengers were pleasantly surprised with the speed at which they were processed through security.

While I won’t yet return to the days when I might deliberately get to an airport just 45 minutes before departure, the length of security queues is, I believe, a diminishing problem. I am getting more reports about delays in ground handling, in particular queues for baggage drop-off.

If your flight is in the first wave of departures, between 6am and 9am, I certainly commend arriving two hours ahead – and half an hour earlier if you have bags to check in.

Finally, long after the security queues dwindle, I fear long waits will continue for UK Border Force when you come back from Turkey.