'A disaster from start to finish': Cruise passengers say airline havoc and lost luggage have turned relaxing vacations into a stressful ordeal

• Airlines have been losing luggage and sending it to the wrong airports in a summer of travel chaos.
• For cruise-goers who sail between ports, getting their lost luggage back is a major headache.

Luggage problems have become a major fixture of air travel in 2022. Thousands of passengers have seen their luggage go missing, taken on the wrong flight, left in the city where they transferred, or forgotten at the airport they flew from.

In many cases, passengers don't get their luggage until days after they arrive on vacation. For others, it takes much longer, and some still haven't been reunited with their bags weeks or months after arriving back home.

For cruise-goers, however, missing luggage is causing an even bigger headache.

Insider spoke to five cruise passengers, who said variously that they spent their trips around Europe canceling plans, borrowing clothes from strangers, and struggling to contact their airlines after luggage problems.

Some passengers said they had to choose whether to wait at the airport for information on their luggage or risk missing their cruise boarding time, with one saying that he arrived just as the gangplank was being lifted up.

'A disaster from start to finish'

"It was a disaster from start to finish," one passenger, Ed Perry, told Insider.

Perry and his wife had flown with Air Canada from North Carolina for a two-week Viking River Cruise from Amsterdam in the Netherlands to Budapest, Hungary in June. But after facing flight delays and a change of route, as well as having to check their hand luggage in because it was too big, Perry and his wife lost their two carry-on bags and their piece of hold luggage.

Air Canada didn't respond to Insider's request for comment on Perry's case.

Other passengers told Insider of similar experiences.

Todd McCloud Jr, who went on a Carnival cruise around the Caribbean with his family in August, said that his lost luggage "put a damper on our whole trip."

After a last-minute change of flight, bags belonging to McCloud and his brother weren't switched onto his flight to Orlando, where he had just a few hours to spare before he had to board the ship, he told Insider.

McCloud said that a staff member told him that the bags would arrive on another flight and be taken directly to the Carnival port, but that the bags ultimately failed to make it on time, he told Insider.

"I'm lucky that I didn't put our birth certificates in those bags or else we wouldn't have been able to go on the cruise at all," he said.

After his cruise, McCloud returned to Orlando, and when he got to the airport "they had our bags waiting for us," he said. Southwest, the airline with which he flew, also provided him with a voucher as well as a check for the replacement items he bought for his trip, he said.

"We don't discuss with third parties the specifics of our conversations in the ongoing relationship we have with our Customers," Southwest told Insider.

A number of passengers Insider spoke to said their luggage got lost during layovers. Bob Sweigart, who went on a Celebrity Edge cruise around Europe in June, told Insider that his British Airways flight from San Diego to London Heathrow was delayed by 21 hours, causing him to miss his Alitalia connection to Rome.

The airline transferred them both onto another flight, but their bag didn't make it, he said.

In some cases, passengers' bags were passed between various airports after airlines tried to match their luggage up with their cruise itinerary instead.

One passenger, Thomas Hatch, told Insider his bags failed to arrive in Rome after he flew there from Seattle via Heathrow with three other passengers and eight bags in total for a 10-day Celebrity Cruises trip round Europe in mid-July.

British Airways staff told him that their luggage would head to Rome on a later flight, but after that was canceled they sent six of the bags to Athens the day before Hatch's ship docked there. But the airport was "overwhelmed" with luggage and wouldn't let the ship's porter collect their bags, Hatch said.

Hatch said that two of his bags were sent to Thessaloniki Airport, too, even though the ship never called there.

British Airways didn't respond when contacted by Insider about Hatch's experience.

Another cruise passenger, who asked to remain anonymous in case it impeded their chances of getting compensation, sent Insider photos of luggage tags on her bag, which appeared to show the airline had sent it to four European airports in failed attempts to get to align with her cruise.

No luggage means no clothes

Perry said that he and his wife couldn't shop when the cruise docked because they'd already paid for excursions, but that other passengers lent them clothes. The passenger who asked to remain anonymous said that her family had to cancel plans on their trip to buy clothes.

Some passengers said that they didn't get much help from their airlines but that the cruise lines stepped in to help them.

"Air Canada was almost impossible to reach," one passenger, Zoe Greenberg, told Insider, adding that she had called the airline daily and that her husband once spent three and a half hours on hold. "They had no idea where our bags were."

Air Canada didn't respond to Insider's request for comment on Greenberg's issue.

Greenberg had flown both to and from Barcelona for her Silversea cruise. She told Insider that on the way back, her husband found her luggage in a store room in Barcelona "with thousands of bags." He didn't get his own bag back until 26 days after the trip, she said.

Viking "bent over backwards for us," Perry said, saying that staff lent him their cell phones so he could make international calls to Air Canada, who he said he struggled to contact during his trip and never offered to send his luggage to other ports. Perry and Greenberg said that their cruise lines had offered to waive the fee for laundry during their trip.

"Most of the trip is just a blur," Greenberg said, adding that she would "never" travel without AirTags on her luggage again.

Sweigart and his wife got their luggage back after four weeks. An email viewed by Insider showed that British Airways offered Sweigart and his wife 600 euros ($612) each as compensation for their canceled and said it would also cover their expenses.

"Now that we have our luggage back we have a ton of clothes," Sweigart said.

Have you been affected by current travel disruptions? Or do you work at an airport or for an airline that's swamped by staffing and cancelation chaos? Email this reporter at gdean@insider.com.