Came back yesterday..... Bonaire was great!!
Very dissapointed in AA though.
Bought a new travel bag (over $200!)for our diving gear the day before we went to Bonaire.
Bad was destroyed when we picked it from the lugage conveyer at flamingo airport!!!
All AA said was :too bad..... we are sorry!

Well..... I am sorry too!!

You should still be able to file a complaint with them, but do so quickly.

Jake

I wonder where in the baggage handling cycle that the damage happened?? I think the 'AA" people on Bonaire are contract to AE. Still no excuse for 'so solly'. I would talk to the real AA.

Same thing happened to me, but the damage occurred in San Juan (I was flying in from Sint Maarten, so had to claim my luggage there to pass through customs, before continuing on to Bonaire). When I made a claim here in Bonaire, I was informed to make the claim with AA headquarters within 30 days of the travel date; I did that, and got a note back from AA saying they didn't cover things like wheels, handles, etc, both of which they had managed to destroy.

Good luck!

Susan

Sounds familiar Susan.
Thats how they did me.
The wheels on mine were perfect the bag just wanted to go left if I pulled it right. The frame was destroyed and some minor damage to the canvas.

I complained about it at the AA in Atlanta and got the "sorry answer".


Richard

Richard, I hope all the contents were okay, even tho the bag suffered. I agree it is very frustrating to have new luggage damaged on its very first trip (that happened to me, too - I think on our last trip to Bonaire). Anyway - we travel a lot, and have an embarrassingly large collection of luggage of all different types, seeking the perfect solution.

What we have found is a great luggage repair shop which has fixed any number of problems at very reasonable prices. You also might try the manufacturer of the luggage, as it should stand up better to normal baggage handling than what you describe. (On one or maybe two occasions, Samsonite replaced free-of-charge a rolling bag that had not made it thru to our or their satisfaction.)

Great profile pic, BTW!

Hi, Lisa. Sorry about your bag. I agree with Ginny. An expensive bag like that should hold up better. Hope you had a great trip . It was nice meeting you and Richard! Let's have meatballs with curry ketchup for dinner tonight! Margarite

Thanks Ginny :-)

I travel A lot for work and my samsonite only got destroyed once, but thats not so strange if you put over 140 pounds of steel in it (KLM paid for the damage that time..... no discussions at all)
I think samsonite would be a good choice for diving gear since they make suitcases in all sizes.

We went back to The Dive Shop (Atlanta) and they replaced the bag for a hard case pelican travel case (only had to pay the price difference) Great service!!!!

Hey Margarite

We went to watteburger last saturday..... meatbals were great!
It is going to be Meatloaf with Peanutbutter sauce tonight!
(lisa will mail you the recipe as soon as she figures it out :-) )

Richard

Sorry about your baggage problems. I always try to carry on my as much of my dive gear as possible. I can get my BC, regulator, mask, dive light, booties, swim suit, snorkle, shorts and a tee shirt in my carry-on (it will fit on AA's ATR's). On AA you can also carry on a briefcase or a small book type backpack as your "personal" item. I use duffle type dive bags for my checked baggage and have wetsuit, fins, and clothes in them. We cross-pack our checked bags so if one doesn't show up we still will have clothes to wear and a wetsuit - we each take a long wet suit and a shorty.

You can view AA's conditions of carriage at AA.Com. Here's the link:
http://www.aa.com/content/customerService/customerCommitment/conditionsOfCarriage.jhtml#Baggage

Note that the airlines' liability on international flights is just $9.07US per pound for checked baggage.

Read the airlines' conditions of carriage for the airline that you are flying. If there is an oversale, misconnection or other tragedy you will be better informed on what the minimum the airline is responsible for. The airlines can always give you more than they are required to, but sometimes try to give you less....

It seems that American Airlines are upsetting a lot of folks. If they continue to operate as they are doing now it will not be long before they find themselves behind the bankruptcy 8 ball. 1 billion dollars a quarter in the loss column, Think there may be a problem??? They have forgotten what the words "customer service" mean for starters.
I talked with 20 people or so on my trip down to Bonaire and back and not one person said they would fly with AA again unless it could not be avoided.

Rats..looking forward to my trip with AA Xmas day to Bonaire....smash them, spank them ...I'm on vacation.....YIPEE

Any one else want a hard-case pelican?

We have 2 and to be quite honest I hate the darn things. They're big (the 1650 was the model we bought), heavy (28 pounds empty), unweildy even though they have wheels, and I seem to always end up gouging a piece out of my leg on the latches. Arrgh!

Geoffrey isn't quite so unhappy with them, but he wasn't the one dragging the darn things into and out of the back of the Toyota this time. I get my revenge I guess when I need hip-replacement.

I'll sell mine, cheap! Even have the foam-rubber tear-away insert stuff, never been torn.

As I mentioned above, we have quite a selection of luggage for air travel. Packing for a short dive trip to Florida in September, I actually weighed empty luggage to fine tune our process even more, and we still ended up using the Samsonite wheeled, hard-side bags. We have a couple of Wheelie Beasts from REI that seemed like a great solution to keep it to one bag per person (plus personal carry-on), but that was too heavy & unmanageable for me when fully loaded with dive gear. So in February when we go to Bonaire again, we will be dividing the gear up differently and each check 2 bags so that none will be too heavy to manage. Gee, we've been doing this for more than 10 years, and we still keep refining our system.

I usually have large bag with my fins, 3 masks, shorty, shore boots, beach mat, a couple towels and a camera bag. Last trip flew AA to Ft Lauderdale and an affiliate to Freeport. Everything arrived in Freeport except my dive bag. This was Friday noon. I called AA every day, sometimes twice, they couldn't find it. "Oh, just purchase replacements and file a claim." Finally by Wednesday I was at wits end and I just ask the girl at the AA service counter in FtLau to just look around on her break because I really needed my prescription mask and I couldn't replace it. It had to be there as it was my only transfer. She called me back 1/2 hour later and said that it was just sitting there on the dock and she sent it on the evening flight. 5 days and close to $100 in phone bills lots of "We'll look and call you backs." and no one would take the time to take a quick peek on the dock.
Then on the flight back I saw a large blue bag fall off a baggage car, and for the 45 minutes or so as we sat waiting for taxi clearance, I watched 5 or 6 baggage cartrains drive around it, dozens of people walk past it, one guy actually got out of his truck, kicked it to get it out of the way (he was going to the dock). No one would pick it up, Incredable! Then I relized why no one could find MY bag, they are invisable.

Stories like Lisa and Richard's and Clint's confirm my near-paranoia about ever handing my luggage over to any half-awake baggage handling crew, most of whom never see the passengers' whose valuable gear they are tossing about on and off the tarmac.

Instead, my packing regimen consists of never taking more than what I can carry - literally.

Ok, you say, but there is so much gear for SCUBA, and I just have to have my own stuff! No problem; when my wife and I last came to Bonaire we arrived with just two big duffles that we could carry on our backs (using the handles as shoulder straps) and two smaller sachel bags that fit within the "purse or briefcase" category. Within these four containers - all of which fit just within AA's practices for carry-on baggage - we had crammed not less than 2 full sets of BCDs, fins, masks, regs, octos, gauges, dive computers, snorkels, full wetsuits, boots, swimsuits, adequate changes of clothes, minimal toiletries, some items to deliver to our hosts and a few other Bonaire residents who needed things from the states, cameras, film, travel documents, and some snack food that could be consumed en-route if needed.

Of course, it took 4 hours to come up with a packing arrangement so that everything would fit without bursting our bags at their seems. On the other hand, we breezed through all airports without ever waiting for our luggage to catch up with us. I don't know if everyone will get the same results, but we also did not have to undergo any hand-searches of our carry-on bags. At Flamingo, as of June, ALL checked luggage was being opened and searched by hand, while carry-ons were just x-rayed and, at most, randomly hand inspected.

While Douglas Adams, in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" advises that a large plush towel is an indispensible necessity during interstellar travel, I have learned that such items are quite plentiful in most civilized places on Earth, so I never pack them - they tend to take up quite a lot of space.

-LS

I ONLY fly AA as a last resort! I hate their service, they never arrive on time and rarely leave on time. I missed a connecting flight to Utila because of their POOR service! Stranded in San Pedro Sula overnight... Not my first choice for overnight stays.

jimini

funny, but when talking about flying to and from bonaire, all the complaints used to be about alm (always late mon/all luggage missing). but the only problem we ever had was with american airlines. alm left bonaire when the plane was full, not when it was scheduled to leave, so we actually got to curacao about 5 minutes before we should have been leaving bonaire. but as we were landing we were informed that our aa flight to miami would be "a bit late". a bit late turned out to be six hours late. we ended up getting to miami about 1030PM and by the time we got to a hotel and ate and got to bed it was about 130AM. then we had to get up at 330AM to make our flight home. unfortunately, american airlines is becoming the only game in town to fly into bonaire. hope service improves....