An airline passenger says her luggage has been missing for almost a month and she's spent $450 trying to find it

• A passenger traveling from Atlanta to Copenhagen via Toronto says her bags have been lost for 28 days.
• Nancy Gaines told Insider she had spent hundreds of dollars on calls trying to find the bags.

An airline passenger who booked a flight from Atlanta to Copenhagen via Toronto says her and her mother's bags have been missing for almost a month.

Nancy Gaines told Insider she had spent hundreds of hours and dollars on international calls to both Air Canada and KLM in her efforts to track down the missing luggage.

Gaines said she planned to take a 14-day cruise with her 80-year-old mother that departed from Copenhagen on June 22.

But when Gaines and her mother's first flight to Toronto Pearson International Airport on June 21, operated by Air Canada, was delayed, the pair missed their connecting flight to Copenhagen, operated by KLM.

Gaines said Air Canada rebooked them onto a flight departing the next day to Bergen, Norway, where the cruise was due to stop. However, when they arrived in Norway on June 23, they discovered that neither of their bags had made the journey.

A spokesperson for Air Canada told Insider they only dealt directly with customers but said the airline was "working hard" with third-party partners and governments to resolve issues. Representatives for KLM did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

Gaines said she and her mother never even made it onto the cruise ship as her mother fell off a hotel bed in Bergen and fractured her hip. The accident left her mother hospitalized and the pair stuck in Norway for over three weeks with none of their belongings.

"I washed clothes every three days because I only bought three days of outfits hoping that they'd find our luggage," Gaines said.

"I also had to buy new contacts," she added. "Luckily, I had my prescription with me on my phone and the pharmacy at the hospital believed me."

"It was just one disaster after another between lost baggage, not having our stuff, staying overnight waiting for the next flight, the missed connection, and then she falls and fractured her hip," she said.

Gaines's arduous attempts to get her luggage back cost her almost $450 and caused her to spend more than 40 hours on the phone.

Her phone bill from June 5 to July 4 totaled $449.18, with $366.73 of that figure attributed to international usage, according to documents seen by Insider. Gaines said she had made more calls throughout July and was expecting another high phone bill in early August.

"Every day I would call on my cell phone and the hold times were crazy — if you could even get through," she said.

"They could only answer certain questions and a couple of times they just disconnected from me because they didn't know the answer," she said. "They just cut off and then I had to get back in line."

Gaines said the two arrived back in back to Atlanta on Sunday but have still not had their bags returned. Air Canada told Gaines they were delivered to the original destination, Copenhagen, on June 30 but she still doesn't have an update on when they will be shipped back to the US.

"They know where the bags are," she said. "They just still aren't getting them to us, calling us, or giving us updates."

Gaines said she's concerned the bags are now stuck in a backlog as airlines scramble to reunite customers with their lost baggage.

"The frustration is I feel like I'm doing all the work," she said. "They're just saying be patient with us, they're coming but they're not being proactive."