Standing at the carousel at Manchester Airport after a long or short haul flight hoping and praying that your luggage will appear. After what seems to be an eternity of waiting, you finally decide that your luggage has not arrived back with you and wonder what you are supposed to do next. This article describes what you can do to get your luggage back as quickly as possible.

First of all we need to understand why luggage goes missing in the first place. Missing luggage can usually be put down to human error. There are many different people who will interact with your luggage during its long journey and you are dependent such people as baggage handlers, check in personnel and security staff all getting their individual jobs absolutely right. Unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world and things will go wrong and unfortunately it could be your bag that gets lost.

Once you have realised that your bag is missing the first thing you need to do is report it missing at the lost baggage desk. At Manchester Airport these desks can usually be found in the baggage return areas but. Any member of staff will be able to direct you to the nearest desk should you have difficulty in locating them.

When reporting your lost luggage be sure to give as detailed a description as you can as it is much easier to locate a bag if they know what they are looking for. You may also be asked for a description of your luggage contents, again as much detail as possible but not totally necessary as nobody will expect you to know everything you have packed in your luggage.

Unfortunately there is no set time limit for finding lost luggage and airlines will more than likely not declare your luggage as officially lost until approximately 21 days so with any luck it will turn up naturally before then. There are various agencies that can help with lost luggage and are not difficult to find. they are off airport companies and more than likely a member of staff will give out their details. After the twenty one day period if your luggage still has not turned up you are entitled in most cases to claim compensation from your airline for your losses. I realise that this really is not what you would like but at least if you are aware of this fact you may get something back, then its not a total loss. In some cases airlines may be obliged to pay up to eight hundred pounds per person for lost luggage.

A very important note that everybody should know and not many people do, is that most airlines will try and persuade their customers to claim for any lost luggage through their own personal travel insurance. You are well within your rights to push the airline for direct compensation as under the Montreal Convention if an airline accepts any item as checked baggage it must accept liability for it. Most travel policies do not cover lost luggage but if they do they will no doubt be claiming the money back directly off the airline anyway.

The long and short of lost luggage is, that there really is no hard or fast or even guaranteed way to get your luggage back. Only ways and means to try. Armed with this information you will stand more than a fighting chance of getting your luggage back or at least some money to help ease the pain.