Saturday, October 17, 2009

Continental Airlines will Steal Your Luggage and Ruin Your Career

More on this as the story unfolds. I was kind of hoping this saga would be over by now, but no. This is Day 3 of Dean stuck in Amsterdam with no luggage, no bike (for which he paid a surprise $150 fee when bikes are supposed to ship free on international flights unless they don't like the way you look), and no way to compete in the 6-day racing event in which he was contracted to appear.

Continental doesn't even know where his luggage is. "Luggage" meaning a custom-built track bike, uniforms, bike shoes, and peripherals valued at - I don't know - lots.

I've never wished for a large blog audience, until now, when I want to shame Continental into getting off their collective asses and fulfilling their obligations.

3 comments:

D.B. Echo said...

This is nuts. If Continental is not providing tracking information on this, then you should assume it's been stolen while in their possession. Which means it's a security matter. Which means it's also a matter for HOMELAND Security - if some employee of the carrier is tampering with cargo, then it wouldn't take a Libyan businessman to get something ONTO one of their flights.

Are they stomewalling you, or being transparent about where the scan trail ends?

Airlines have limited their liability for consequential damages through international agreements. I have no idea who has liability for what in this situation. Have the racing event organizers dealt with situations like this before?

Brian and Becca Davis said...

Can you maybe ask if Adam will tweet it or if he will ask Peter to tweet it? I know when Peter had issues with another airline and put it out there they responded to him. Dean's story is powerful enough that I'd think they'd be willing to do it...

DT said...

Update from Amsterdam: It's now the 3rd full day in the country, and my only t-shirt doesn't smell very good. My bike frame was delivered last night, but some critical components needed to build it plus all my racing clothing/equipment and regular clothes and toiletries are in my other bag, which is nowhere to be found.

I have a tracking number, and when it is searched on the website or when I call the service number the result comes up as "missing." So they still don't know where it is.

Racing starts tommorow, and the last flight for the day from Houston has already arrived in Amsterdam.