Please just buy travel insurance and Apple AirTag

“Aiyah nothing will happen one” well that’s what I thought. Honestly who can predict what will happen during your trip, flight delays, cancellation, lost baggage etc. I know it costs extra and if nothing happens it could have been money saved but what if something did happen, what then?

During my trip to Prague, I had to layover in Munich for 6 hours. On 14 December, we boarded our flight to Prague but we got caught into a freezing rain whereby the rain was frozen on the runways. The entire airport was shut down and no flights were able to take off. We were rebooked by Lufthansa for a flight at 15 December so we had to stay an additional night in Munich. Lufthansa offered €150 per night for hotel stay and we were lucky enough to book the moment the flight was cancelled since afterwards when I was speaking to other passengers they told me that the hotels were either fully booked or the price were above €150.

Our flight on 15 December was to Düsseldorf and we had to take a connecting flight to Prague. Of course our first flight got delayed by 1.5 hours. The ground staff at Munich airport assured everyone that our luggage’s were in the new aircraft and that our flight at Düsseldorf would wait for this flight to arrive. Well we never made the flight to Prague. The plane did try to wait and delayed take off for over half an hour but we landed way too late. When we landed in Düsseldorf and exited the plane, lo and behold our luggages didn’t come and when I checked my apple AirTag it was still in Munich.

Things got much worse in Düsseldorf as the Lufthansa help desk closes at 9pm and honestly she wasn’t too helpful and was more concerned about going home despite 20 of us standing infront of her counter. We ended up going to the Lufthansa check in counter where the staff provided us with a taxi and hotel voucher. They tried to rebook us on another flight which was to fly back to Munich or Frankfurt and take another flight to Prague which no way will I do that what if it gets delayed again and we missed the flight, our allocated days in Prague will be fully used up. We decided to take the plunge and booked the next flight out to Prague through eurowings in the morning the next day on 16 December which thankfully we managed to reach Prague.

However, the hotel voucher they provided us was invalid and we had to pay the hotel first as Lufthansa did not contact the hotel. Not only that we had no luggages throughout the entire trip and we were to spend 21 days with 2 cabin luggages that were mostly empty with no clothes.

The total hours lost was about 44-45 hours I can no longer remember the exact. I managed to file an insurance claim and got back $800 which was the maximum for my policy. I only received my luggages during the new year on 8th January which you can file for baggage delay received $200 from another insurance company that did not provide as great of an coverage. But I was able to receive an reimbursement from Lufthansa for the new clothes and toiletries.

Tips:

1. Always take photos of your flight and baggage tickets before you take off. It’ll help when filing insurance and in any case you lost the information. Sometimes they ask the ticket number rather than booking number so just in case just take the photo.

2. If your flight is delayed, immediately search on Google or the airline app and screenshot it. Must have flight number long with date and time stamps. This will help with evidence as insurance will ask for it. I found it the easier way to provide evidence as there is no way you can ask the airline for evidence

3. If your baggage is lost and you have to purchase new clothes and toiletries. Make a photo album on your phone and take a photo of the receipt every item you purchased that is claimable (i.e. shoes, clothes, makeup, toiletries) immediately after purchase. This will help in any case you lost the receipt or the receipt ink faded or you could not remember if a certain receipt was eligible for claims with the airline.

4. Get an Apple AirTag, again a you never know situation. With the AirTag I was able to continuously track my luggage to see if it was found or still lost in Munich airport. It really can give you a small piece of mind.

5. Pack some clothes in your cabin just in case especially underwear!

Disclaimer: I’m not super super well versed but with the few instances I had to file insurance, I would recommend NTUC Income. NTUC Income was the fastest to approve and payout (wasn’t used during this trip but was used previously and had to file claims with them as well). Chubb was decent but it took awhile for the approval and my friend had a negative experience with them. As for the lower coverage policy I won’t even mention because they originally didn’t even let us claim for the baggage.

Please always read through what the various policies covers before purchasing!

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