Beware YUL

[bellinghman]

If there's a slight downside to our trip to Canada, it was the Montréal Dorval (YUL) airport luggage handling.

On arrival on our inbound flight, the luggage conveyor stopped working and had to be restarted, causing somewhat of a delay. This may be a symptom of other problems.

A number of the cases on the conveyor had handles that were either missing or merely partly torn off. I've never seen such a battered set of luggage, and this was on a flight inbound from London, so I don't think we were looking at third-world bags.

On our case, the address tag on our main case was broken by the time we retrieved it.

On our return to Montréal, landing from Vancouver, the extensible handle on our main case refused to extend. Closer examination shows that the tube inside the case, down which the handle shaft slides, had taken such a severe impact that it had buckled, trapping the shaft in place.

Now, it's possible that none of this damage occurred at Dorval. But I'd lay odds that the one common factor was in fact the problem, and that the inbound luggage system there is uncommonly brutal to luggage. In future, we might want to invest in some tougher cases before returning there.

Comments

[drplokta]

We also had an internal tube buckle on our outward flight to YUL, preventing the handle from working.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I assume you also flew BA from T5, so that doesn't totally knock out the possibility that it was LHR and YVR to blame rather than YUL. But it does make me more suspicious.

At least we had the problem on our homebound flight.

Next question: would it have justified the existence of luggage shops airside that sell bags too big for carry-on?

[jon-a-five.livejournal.com]

Is it covered by your insurance?

[bellinghwoman.livejournal.com]

It wasn't a particularly expensive suitcase in the first place, so I doubt if the cost of a replacement would reach the level of the excess on any insurance policy we might want to claim against.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

It was a cheap case - so it's probably not worth claiming.

The only time I tried to claim recently was on my mobile phone insurance, when the screen on my Nokia E16i broke. In the end, I decided to buy a replacement screen and the appropriate tool, and repair it myself. It cost slightly more than I'd have ended up paying in excess and postage, but it meant that I didn't lose the phone for a few days.

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

No problems for me (flying from T5) but the luggage coming off one of the other flights that had landed at the same time looked like it had been trashed, quite a few of the suitcases were wrapped up in polythene due to damage.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Yep, that sounds like what we were seeing.

OK, I think we've sufficient evidence to convict.

[timill]

Thanks for reminding me - one of our cases was broken when we got back from Montreal, and we need to take the corpse back to American.