The airline’s baggage desk is designed to make you go away. You fill in a form, you are given a reference number, and somebody says it will probably turn up. Most people accept that, wait, get the bag back two days later with their clothes in it, and never claim a penny.
What almost nobody is told at that desk is that an international treaty sets a hard ceiling on what the airline owes you, that the ceiling is high, and that the clock on claiming it is measured in days.
The ceiling
On international flights the Montreal Convention caps an airline’s liability for baggage that is destroyed, lost, damaged or delayed at 1,519 SDR per passenger. That limit rose from 1,288 SDR on 28 December 2024, as part of a review the aviation body carries out roughly every five years.
An SDR is a Special Drawing Right, an accounting unit used by the International Monetary Fund and built from a basket of currencies. It is not a currency you can hold, and its value moves daily, which is why the treaty is written in SDR rather than in dollars or euros that would need renegotiating every few years.
To make it concrete: on 23 October 2026 one SDR was worth about US$1.355, which puts the cap at roughly US$2,060. That figure drifts with exchange rates, so treat it as the right order of magnitude rather than a fixed sum.
Two details change how that number behaves in practice. It is a limit per passenger, not per bag, so a couple travelling with three suitcases between them have two caps, not three. And it is a ceiling rather than an entitlement.
It pays what you can prove, not a fixed sum
This is the difference between baggage and delayed flights, and it catches people who have read about the other one. A delayed flight pays a fixed amount set by distance, whatever you spent. Baggage pays your actual, demonstrable loss, up to the cap.
Which means the claim is only ever as good as the receipts. The clothes you bought because your bag did not arrive, the toiletries, the suit hired for the meeting you flew in for: those are claimable with proof and invisible without it. The sentimental value of what was in a lost case is worth nothing to the process.
Buy what you genuinely need, keep every receipt, and do not interpret the airline’s offer of a small goodwill payment as the limit of what is available.
The deadlines are short and they are strict
The treaty sets specific windows for complaining in writing, and missing one generally ends the claim outright rather than weakening it.
| Situation | Window | Measured from |
|---|---|---|
| Damaged baggage | 7 days | The date you received the bag |
| Delayed baggage | 21 days | The date the bag was put at your disposal |
| Treating a bag as lost | 21 days | The date it should have arrived, if the airline has not admitted the loss sooner |
| Bringing a court claim | 2 years | An absolute limit no court can extend |
Seven days for damage is the one that quietly expires. You get the bag back, notice the cracked shell or the broken wheel, decide to deal with it when you are less tired, and the week is gone. Once it is, the airline is generally not liable at all, short of fraud on its part.
On the 21-day point for lost luggage, a word of precision. Plenty of guides say a bag is “automatically declared lost” after 21 days. That is a simplification. What the treaty does is let you enforce your rights as though it were lost once the airline admits it or 21 days have passed since it should have arrived. In practice that is the moment your claim changes from inconvenience to contents, but nobody pronounces anything.
Raising the ceiling before you fly
The cap can be lifted, but only in advance. If you make a special declaration of higher value at check-in and pay whatever supplementary fee the airline asks, the limit rises to the declared amount.
Hardly anyone does this, and for most trips that is the right call. It is worth knowing about for the specific case where the hold contains something genuinely valuable and you have no alternative. The better answer in that situation remains not putting it in the hold.
Cameras, laptops, medication, documents and jewellery belong in the cabin, both because the cap may not cover them and because many carriers specifically exclude or limit liability for valuables in checked baggage in their own conditions of carriage.
What to do at the airport
- File the report before you leave the airport. The Property Irregularity Report is the document everything later refers back to. Leaving without one makes every subsequent step harder.
- Photograph the bag and the damage at the point you notice it, with the baggage tag visible.
- Keep the tag and the boarding pass. The stub stapled to your boarding pass is the proof the bag was checked at all.
- Put the complaint in writing inside the window. A report at the desk is not the same thing as the written complaint the treaty requires. Send it, dated, and keep a copy.
- Keep receipts as you go, not retrospectively. Reconstructing a week of emergency purchases from memory is how claims shrink.
This is general information rather than legal advice, and the rules that apply depend on your route, the carrier and whether the journey counts as international under the treaty. Check your airline’s conditions of carriage alongside it.
Common questions
Does this apply to domestic flights?
The Montreal Convention governs international carriage. Purely domestic journeys fall under national rules and the airline’s own conditions, which may be less generous. If your trip has an international leg, check how the whole itinerary is treated rather than assuming the domestic segment is separate.
Should I claim on travel insurance instead?
Often both, in order. The airline is the first port of call because its liability is the treaty’s, and insurers routinely ask what the carrier has already paid before settling the rest. Claiming only on insurance may also mean paying an excess for something the airline owed you outright.
What if the airline just offers a voucher?
You are not obliged to take it. A voucher is an offer to settle, usually below what proven expenses would come to, and accepting one may close the claim. If your receipts exceed it, say so and submit them.
My bag arrived but something was missing.
That is treated as damage to the baggage rather than delay, which means the seven-day window applies rather than twenty-one. Pilferage claims are harder to evidence, so photograph the bag, note any tampering with the zip or seal, and report it immediately rather than after you have unpacked properly.
Does the cap reset on a connecting flight?
No. On a single international journey the limit applies to the journey, not to each sector, which is another reason the per-passenger framing matters. Which carrier you claim against on a multi-airline itinerary is a separate question, and usually the one that operated the leg where the bag went astray.
Leave a Reply