I have 30 minutes to get a suit, shoes and a shirt. BA have lost my luggage. None of their ‘help’ lines are open. What is a reasonable amount for clothes?

I am guessing that they will complain if I try to replace the clothes I have with equivalents (£1000 suits etc).

What does a reasonable suit cost?

just go to M&S (or swiss equivalent) and buy what you need.

£200-250

including shoes and shirt

You can buy a suit for <£200?!?

It’s a bit late but anyway, when I was flying a lot I bought a travel suit by SAND (Danish I think) which was completely crease resistant. I just rolled it up tight and kept it in my rucksack. Best investment I ever made.

You can buy a suit for <£200?!?

Don’t be such a snob, of course you can. If it’s only going to be worn once, I’d say that’s pretty reasonable

I’d check carefully before you buy anything dude. Was stuck for a few days pre-crimbo without luggage with mrs deadly in Whistler (thank you United Airlines). When I was getting worried about the possibility of not getting it at all, I started looking into it i.e. how much United would compensate and how much my travel insurance (dogtag pro) would pay. Turns out to be two fifths of **** all. And even £200 might not be considered reasonable. Seems that because airlines do it all the time, it’s one of the least covered things of all. And there was bumf about having receipts for the belongings in the luggage. E.g. there were two pairs of mrs deadly’s knee-high boots and two pairs of my boots that would have cost around £600 to replace alone. We would have been looking at £25 per item lost.

I doubt your airline will compensate you at all for delayed luggage – that will be up to your travel insurance (which, as you are clearly so rich) you must have.

Most companies will not pay out until the luggage has been missing for more than 12 hours, then the exact payment depends on the terms. On a recent trip my wife and I lost our luggage. As it was a business trip for her (I was just along for the jolly), her stuff was covered on the company policy, whereas mine was on our own multi-trip policy with the AA. I got a maximum of £200 at 12 hours, she got £200 after 12 hours + £50 for each additional hour after 24 hours.

Depends a lot on the airline I think. Air France lost our bags with our ski-ing stuff in it. We called and they said our limit was about 100 quid or something – I explained that this would in no way cover the cost of buying/hiring new stuff so they said ok spend what you need (within reason). So we clocked up 800 euros of ski clothes in about 10 minutes and they paid up no problem.

Obviously if you couldn’t get through to any BA helpline then it’s a bit more risky to go off and spend money.

WCA – stick it on your work credit card and let your HR/Admin/Insurance peeps sort it out for you. Hope you get it sorted.

Hire it, they should pay for that at least!

If only there was an ASDA…. £15 !!

Think it’s not a huge amount per kilo of luggage – it’s not "we lost your Armani suit" here’s another.

That’s what travel insurance is for.

Think you’d be lucky to get £250 otherwise everyone would suddenly have packed designer suits/dresses/shoes/cameras etc. – the only thing the ailine knows is your suitcase weighed, say, 17.9kg

so have the jobs been saved by a man in jeans and a smelly t-shirt or was more suitable atire found?

I gave a technical presentation as part of a sales pitch in Lahore back in 2000. My luggage ended up in Karachi so I had to go and purchase some new clothes.

The best I could manage at short notice was a pair of custard coloured trousers with the crotch between the knees, a very long lime green shirt and a sun flower print kipper tie (well you only get one chance at a first impression etc). The local guys, who wore a fetching array of pastel coloured safari suits, thought it was hysterical. The luggage turned up 4 days later and we got the order so it all worked out in the end.

I travelled out wearing black combat pants and a black fleece that matched my black hiking boots and black back pack. On reflection not a good thing to do because I got accused of being a Russian mercenary.

Don’t know about the airlines, I think the first problem is waiting for them to admit thay have actually lost, rather than mislaid or misdirected your luggage.
Do you have any travel insurance associated with your creidt card or bank account?
Just looked at the rules of my NatWest policy, if baggage temporarily lost and not restored wihin four hours of arrival at destination, max £100, 48 hours after arrival max £400. If completely lost max of £2,500 per person with a limit of £400 on any single article.

Jeans and t-shirt for the first meeting. Customer sort of understanding and the luggage was at the airport when I finished that meeting.

The airline wouldn’t have paid for the clothes according to the lost luggage BTW. Travel insurance would.

Whe my luggage was delayed by two days on a summer skiing holiday, BA reimbursed me £100 for "emergency" expenses (toiletries, sox, kecks, shirt) and my insurance coughed up £300 for the ski gear I had to buy or hire – I actually spent more than that, but got a v. nice goretex jacket out of it so I’m not complaining too hard.

i got just under a grand out of BA after the T5 fiasco. my bags turned up two weeks after i got back from a week in chamonix. i went out a bought what i needed for me and my wife. they took a while but paid out everything i asked for.

if they actually lose the bags i think they are limited to £850 a bag under the warsaw convention. You can ask for extended liability when you check your bags in.

and they don’t consider it lost for about three months, merely delayed….