Ansen Bayer and his wife Amandria on the Scottish island of Iona.
- Aer Lingus and luggage agents delivered bags to a couple’s hotel 5 days after they checked out.
- Ansen Bayer and his wife travelled to Iona, a remote Scottish island, wearing friends’ clothes.
- The Bayers, who are still without their luggage, were travelling for their 15th wedding anniversary.
- For more stories, go to www.BusinessInsider.co.za.
An airline sent a couple’s lost luggage to a hotel on a remote Scottish island, five days after they had checked out and were on the other side of the country.
Ansen Bayer and his wife Amandria flew with American Airlines from Chicago to Dublin in Ireland, before changing to an Aer Lingus flight to Glasgow, Scotland.
The couple were travelling for their 15th wedding anniversary and had their flights cancelled twice before their trip started. Ansen, who had mostly brought carry-on luggage to avoid it getting lost, was forced to check his bags in Chicago anyway.
When they arrived in Glasgow, he noticed their bags were missing, along with those owned by six other passengers. Ansen filed a complaint and was told by Eagle Aviation, the company used by Aer Lingus, that their bags would be shipped to their hotel.
In the meantime, the couple made do with clothes lent to them by travel companions.
Ansen Bayer
Because the couple had to take a train, a bus, and two ferries to reach their hotel in Iona, a remote island off the West coast of Scotland, they feared it was unlikely their luggage would arrive before they left.
“I found an e-mail for them and begged them to not ship our bags to the hotel, because they would not arrive on time,” Ansen told Insider. “We were going back to Glasgow for a day anyway and could pick our bags up at the airport.”
As Bayer predicted, the luggage didn’t arrive until 5 days after they had checked out, when they were already on the other side of the country in Edinburgh.
“I tried to explain that Iona is very remote and it would not arrive on time, but they said there was nothing they could do.”
The lost luggage, which is still waiting in Iona, was just one of several hiccups on a journey that included cancellations, delays, and huge lines at Chicago Airport’s immigration checkpoints, underlining the impact of the travel chaos affecting Europe and the US this summer.
Ansen Bayer
Ansen said Aer Lingus still hasn’t authorised Eagle Aviation to collect the bags, meaning they were still stuck at the hotel 22 days after the airline first lost them. He’s considering paying for the bags to be delivered.
“Everything about this experience with Aer Lingus has been terrible, but their complete and utter lack of any semblance of customer service or even response to someone who has had a terrible experience with them is appalling to me,” he said.
“I guess we can claim we backpacked across the UK since our backpacks are all we had,” Ansen added. “But after saving up for years for this once-in-a-lifetime trip, it still feels like we were robbed a bit by the airlines, forcing us to go through the trip without our luggage that we never even wanted to check in the first place.”
Aer Lingus and Eagle Aviation were contacted for comment.
