Delayed luggage and stolen items

[wondabar]

We had a flight to NAirobi via Frankfurt on Lufthansa. Bags were left in Frankfurt and took two days to reach us. In the meantime we had to get minimum of clothes for safari. We had to also pay for taxi from safari to airport to collect bags. Despite having padlocks on the bags, our two computers are not in them. A lot of you will say that we should have kept computers in our hand luggage but we were flying Premium Economy and thought that the padlocked cases would be fine as they are checked in as priority luggage. The hours lost spent trying to retrieve these bags cannot be replaced but who can I claim the expenses of the clothing and taxis from as well as the missing laptops? Is it Lufthansa or through our own travel insurance? Nobody in NAirobi airport seemed to know. Not the best start to the holiday

https://www.lufthansa.com/be/en/gepaeckunregelmaessigkeiten

Report it to Lufthansa directly

You aren’t supposed to pack items like laptops in hold luggage due to batteries and you agree that you haven’t when you check your luggage in so this could be problematic.

You can’t put computers in checked luggage because of the batteries - they’re a fire risk!! It’s one of the check in questions, did you miss it? The airport probably pulled them out, and it’s probably why the bags were delayed. So by all means check with the airline and airport but I doubt you can claim for having a prohibited item removed.

Actually I just checked and apparently most airlines do let you put them in if switched off so it’s obviously just the ones i travel with who ask and make you remove them.

Me too I thought it was universally banned!

I would echo the others that there is a good chance they’ll say they shouldn’t have been in the checked baggage

https://www.lufthansa.com/ao/en/carry-on-baggage#:~:text=Personal%20documents%2C%20medicines%2C%20valuables%2C,in%20your%20carry%2Don%20baggage.

“Personal documents, medicines, valuables, mobile phones and laptops should also only be carried in your carry-on baggage.”

Exactly this. You can't put a laptop with a lithium ion battery in your case!

Also for future reference, premium economy luggage is no safer from a rogue ground handler on the take than economy luggage or first class luggage is.

If the computers were taken out at Frankfurt and confiscated, surely we would have been notified? Is there any way we can collect them at Frankfurt airport on our way back? We.usually travel with switched-off computers in our hold luggage and have not had any issues before. Recently we were on a trip and were called at the gate to get battery chargers out of our cases. They had run out of juice but were still not allowed in the cases. Surely, we would have been called up by Lufthansa either in Frankfurt or NAirobi if they were concerned.
Regardless as to whether we were at fault or not, do we make the claim to Lufthansa or our insurance company? Unfortunately a lot was not saved on the Cloud.