Do not leave the airport without a report and a file reference. What to photograph, what to ask for at the desk, and what the first written claim must say.
The single most common way people lose a baggage claim is by leaving the airport. Nearly every airline requires the first report to be made before you leave the baggage hall, and some give you as little as four hours after landing.
This site has a first-hour checklist built for a phone in an arrivals hall, with your airline’s own reporting window counting down.
Open the first-hour checklist → Two minutes to your amount and deadlines.
The Property Irregularity Report, the PIR, is the airline’s record that a bag was accepted and did not arrive. Its reference is ten characters: the three-letter airport code, the two-letter airline code, five digits. Every later step, the tracing, the interim expenses, the written claim, the bag-fee refund, keys off that reference. Without it the airline can argue that no report exists, which is a different and much weaker claim.
The law does not set a reporting window for a bag that never arrived, but the airlines do, and they enforce it. Several US carriers want a domestic delayed bag reported within four hours of landing; most want it before you leave the baggage hall; nearly all want damage reported at the airport. Your airline’s page on this site prints its own window next to the date it was checked.
Report online or in the airline’s app before leaving the airport, from the baggage hall, and screenshot the confirmation with the time visible. If the site is down, phone the airline’s baggage line from the hall and note the time and the name of the person. The point is a timestamped record made while you were still at the airport.
Yes. It is not a settlement. An overnight kit or a small allowance handed over at the desk is an interim measure and does not reduce the claim except by its own value. Do not sign anything that describes it as full and final.
Yes, and take the delivery date in writing, because the deadlines for a delayed bag count from the day it reaches you, not the day it was found. A courier receipt or the airline’s delivery confirmation fixes the date. If the bag is delivered while you are out, photograph it as found before opening it.
Within a day or two of landing: the file reference, the flight and dates, what was in the bag in outline, the interim purchases so far with receipts, the bag fee, and a sentence reserving the full contents claim if the bag is not delivered by day 21 on an international trip. Send it to the address the airline’s page on this site gives, or the one on your report. That letter is the claim; the desk report is only the start of the clock.
Report it now, online or by phone, and say when you landed. Some airlines accept later reports; a late report weakens the claim but rarely kills it if the bag never arrived.