A class action filed by 13 people who claim their bags were lost by British Airways could establish new law by defining what constitutes “recklessness” in the handling of airline passengers' luggage.

The Montreal Convention, which governs the international air transportation of baggage and cargo, normally limits damages for passenger losses to $1,500. As a result, lost airline baggage is rarely litigated, with most cases confined to small claims courts.

But BA has compiled a particularly abysmal record, losing more baggage than any other airline in the world. According to the Air Transport Users Council, it loses 23 bags per 1,000 passengers carried -- 60 percent more than the industry average.

And those who have sued BA in Seattle federal court believe they should be compensated under an exception to the $1,500 cap that applies when “the damage resulted from an act or omission of the carrier, its servants or agents, done with intent to cause damage or recklessly and with knowledge that damage would probably result.”

The complaint was amended last week to add ten more plaintiffs and their individual horror stories of lost luggage. “Since the complaint was filed in September, we have been inundated with calls and e-mails from passengers who experienced horrific treatment by British Air,” plaintiffs' attorney Steve W. Berman explained.

One plaintiff, a cancer survivor who was flying from New York to South Africa, alleges BA lost her bag containing the pump she uses to prevent lymphatic fluid from building up in her arm.

“Though according to its website 'British Airways takes pride in providing a full service experience' for its passengers, for at least the past two years British Air has instead provided an inexcusably reckless service that fails to protect and deliver its passengers' baggage,” the suit says.

Airline travel as a whole hit a new low last summer, with late flights, lost luggage and disregard for passengers. U.S. carriers lost or damaged more than one million pieces of luggage, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics reports.

There is no case law defining reckless baggage handling. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a wrongful-death case that an airline could be liable for a flight crew's “reckless disregard of the consequences” of not using radar to make a landing in poor visibility.

“[The crew] deliberately continued their descent, with knowledge that such procedure would probably result in injury to passengers,” the court said in Butler v. Aeromexico, 774 F.2d 429 (1983).

The class-action plaintiffs accuse BA of operating an inadequate baggage system with similar disregard for the consequences. “Defendant acted recklessly and with foreseeable knowledge that damage, delay and loss of passenger baggage would continue unabated,” they complain.

The problem of lengthy flight delays has inspired Congress to propose an airline passenger bill of rights. An award outside the Montreal Convention cap against BA could help ensure that airlines will no longer get away with business as usual and ignore their baggage-handling problems.

By Peyton Burgess
11/20/07