Your bag did not arrive, or arrived broken — what to do now

Two things decide how this goes, and both happen in the first hour. Report it before you leave the baggage hall, and put the claim in writing. The Malaysian code gives you a deadline counted in days rather than weeks, it sets a different one depending on whether your bag was damaged or merely late, and a claim made after the period has run is a claim the airline is entitled to refuse without looking at it.

Do this before you leave the airport

Report it at the baggage desk in the hall, not afterwards. Whether the bag is missing or has arrived damaged, the report starts the record. Leaving the airport first and telephoning later is the single most common way a valid claim becomes an argument about when you noticed.

Get a reference and keep it. A report without a number you can quote is difficult to follow up.

Photograph a damaged bag where it is, before you move it and before anyone handles it further.

Keep your baggage tag and your boarding pass. They connect you to the bag and the bag to the flight, and reproducing that connection later without them is tedious.

The written claim is a separate step

Reporting at the desk and making the claim are not the same act. The code requires the claim to the carrier in writing, and it sets the period within which that has to happen.

Two periods exist and they are different:

Damage carries the shorter one, counted from when the bag was handed to you.

Delay carries the longer one, counted from when the bag was eventually put at your disposal.

The trap is assuming the longer period covers both. It does not, and the shorter one is short. If your bag came out of the belt broken, treat the clock as running from that moment.

Put the claim in writing even where a desk has been helpful in person. Helpful is not the same as recorded.

What the airline is liable for, and up to what

Liability runs up to a ceiling set in special drawing rights — an international accounting unit made up of a basket of currencies, not a currency itself. Its value against the ringgit moves, which is why no fixed local equivalent for it is worth quoting: a figure without the date of the exchange rate behind it is a number somebody made up, and this is a number you would be repeating in a claim.

The ceiling is a maximum, not an entitlement. What you recover depends on what you actually lost and what you can evidence.

Ordinary wear is not covered, and neither are minor cuts and scratches. A suitcase that has been through a hold looks like a suitcase that has been through a hold; the code does not treat that as damage.

Having insurance changes nothing about the airline’s liability. The obligation applies regardless, and an airline may not use your policy as a reason to decline. In practice the sensible order is to claim against the airline first, because your insurer will usually want the airline’s response as part of your file.

Mobility equipment is a different and better rule

If what was damaged was a wheelchair or other mobility equipment, you are not in the ordinary baggage regime. Compensation is assessed at what the equipment is currently worth on the market rather than at a depreciated value, and a temporary replacement is provided while the claim is dealt with. You may also choose which airline to claim against where more than one carried you.

The detail sits with passenger rights in Malaysia, which is also where the complaint procedure goes if the airline does not resolve this.

If the airline does not resolve it

Complaints go to the airline first — it has published periods within which it must acknowledge and resolve — and to the regulator afterwards, through the regulator’s own consumer portal rather than the address most articles still name.

Do not let it run. There is a limitation period for bringing a complaint to the regulator, this page does not state it because the figure in circulation does not come from the regulator itself, and the prudent assumption is that it is shorter than you would like. Ask when you open the complaint.

This is not the left-luggage desk

Worth saying plainly, because the two get confused in every language: this page is about a bag the airline lost or broke. Somewhere to deposit a bag you still have is a different service in a different part of the terminal with its own terms, and it is on luggage storage.

If your bag is simply taking a long time to appear rather than being confirmed missing, the arrivals board shows which belt your flight was assigned, which is occasionally the whole explanation.