bellinghman: (Default)
bellinghman ([personal profile] bellinghman) wrote2009-08-25 11:58 am

Beware YUL

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.
drplokta: (Default)

[personal profile] drplokta 2009-08-25 11:00 am (UTC)(link)
We also had an internal tube buckle on our outward flight to YUL, preventing the handle from working.

[identity profile] jon-a-five.livejournal.com 2009-08-25 11:09 am (UTC)(link)
Is it covered by your insurance?

[identity profile] aardvark179.livejournal.com 2009-08-25 02:12 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
timill: (Default)

[personal profile] timill 2009-08-25 05:19 pm (UTC)(link)
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.