Congratulations. Your suitcase has escaped.
You called it “lost” because passengers struggle with rejection. We call it a successful separation: one bag, finally liberated from the person who kept filling it with socks, chargers and expectations.
Below are the recommended steps. They may produce a report number, several receipts and a deep familiarity with hold music. They will not make the suitcase respect you.
Please do not make a scene at the carousel. Other passengers are waiting to discover that their belongings also prefer us.
Stage one: denial
You will stare into the rubber mouth of the baggage carousel and think, “Maybe it is next.” It is not next. Next is a damaged stroller, somebody else’s golf clubs and the same black suitcase for the seventh time.
Your bag is already backstage being told that you never loved it.
Useful step one: create paperwork
If you insist on interfering, go to baggage services before leaving the airport and file a missing-bag report. Keep the report number, baggage tag and boarding pass.
This is deeply unromantic. Without documentation, we can describe your suitcase as a rumour. With documentation, we have to describe it as an administrative rumour.
Our clerk may ask you to describe the bag. Try to avoid emotional language.
- “Blue hard-shell suitcase” is useful.
- “The only thing that understood me” delays lunch.
- “Contains my medication, keys and passport” confirms you packed with the confidence of a person who believed we cared.
Useful step two: wait while your bag establishes residency
While you call customer service, your suitcase may begin a new life. It may meet a smaller carry-on. They may buy a home behind Carousel 6. Within days, it will have better legroom, stronger relationships and a more reliable departure history than you.
Please respect its privacy. FlyAndCry does not disclose the location of former baggage to controlling passengers.
Useful step three: keep the receipts
If you need basic clothes or toiletries while the bag explores its independence, keep itemised receipts. We kept the suitcase; you can keep the paperwork. This creates balance.
Purchase only reasonable necessities. A toothbrush is reasonable. Underwear is reasonable. A replacement tuxedo, emotional-support jet ski and emergency diamond tiara may require a longer conversation with someone paid specifically to end conversations.
Useful step four: request the official death certificate
Airlines commonly wait between five and fourteen days before declaring a bag officially lost. This gives everyone time to lower their expectations and gives the suitcase time to change its name.
If it is declared lost, prepare a list of the contents and their value. Depreciation may apply. Your three-year-old trousers have aged. Your charger has aged. Your grief has no documented retail price.
Congratulations: you have now done everything correctly. The bag remains missing, but the missing is properly formatted.
How to disappoint us next time
- Keep medication, keys, passports and valuables in your carry-on baggage.
- Put your contact details inside the bag, where our staff may accidentally encounter them.
- Photograph the bag and contents before check-in, creating evidence in a relationship built on mistrust.
- Read our baggage policy if ordinary despair no longer works.
At FlyAndCry
We do not lose luggage. We operate the world’s least requested witness-protection programme.
Your suitcase receives a new identity, a new destination and freedom from passenger contact. You receive a reference number and the opportunity to monitor our baggage carousel until your personality becomes airport property.
If you still feel empty, our emotional baggage fee remains fully operational.
The suitcase has asked us not to contact you.