The airlines have a quiet rule: roughly 90 days. If they haven't reunited a bag with its owner by then, the bag is officially declared "unclaimed." Compensation is paid out (or not), and the bag itself becomes inventory — not yours, and not really the airline's anymore.
Here's what actually happens after that timer runs out.
The compensation step
If your bag never comes home, the airline owes you up to a cap. For international flights covered by the Montreal Convention, that cap is around 1,288 SDR — currently about $1,700 USD at typical exchange rates. The airline can require receipts, photos, and an itemized list of contents. They're also entitled to depreciate items based on age. Few claimants actually walk away with the full cap; most settlements are well below it.
For domestic flights, the cap is set by the airline's Contract of Carriage and is generally lower — often around $1,500 to $3,500 CAD with similar receipt requirements.
The first lesson here: keep a photo of the contents of your bag before you check it. It costs you 30 seconds and dramatically improves what you can claim.
The bag handoff
Once compensation is paid, the airline owns the bag. Most carriers have a contract with a small handful of unclaimed-baggage liquidators — the most famous of which is Unclaimed Baggage in Scottsboro, Alabama, which has been the primary US destination for "permanently lost" luggage from major US carriers for decades.
In Canada, the picture is patchier. There's no Canadian equivalent of Scottsboro at scale. Some bags are auctioned off through provincial unclaimed-property auctions. Others are sold in bulk to liquidation companies and end up at flea markets, online resale, or in second-hand stores. A small fraction is donated.
The contents are typically sorted: clothing, electronics, jewelry, books, miscellaneous. Items with personal identification — passports, IDs, prescription bottles — are supposed to be returned or destroyed under privacy regulations, though the rigour varies.
What this actually means for you
There are roughly four practical implications:
1. The 90-day window is your real recovery window. After that, "your" bag is legally someone else's. Even if you eventually figure out where it went, the airline owes you compensation, not the bag itself.
2. Most of the recovery happens in the first 7 days. Industry data suggests that of the bags that ARE eventually returned, 95%+ come back inside the first week. After that, the search effort drops sharply on the airline side.
3. The bigger your "I want this back" footprint, the better your odds. This is exactly where a tagged bag, an inside-the-bag identifier card, and a contents photo all push the odds in your favour. Each one is a small signal to a baggage handler or unclaimed-baggage processor that this isn't a generic suitcase — it's someone's bag, and there's a clear path to returning it.
4. The valuable stuff should never be in checked luggage anyway. Passports, electronics, prescription medications, and irreplaceable items belong in your carry-on. The 90-day rule should be a worst-case for clothes and toiletries, not a worst-case for your laptop.
The privacy angle
The unclaimed-baggage industry has a real privacy problem that travelers rarely think about. When a bag is sold, anything inside that wasn't filtered out goes with it. Some buyers find old phones, old tablets, old paperwork, sometimes still containing personal data.
This is one more argument for a privacy-respecting tag rather than a "return to [home address]" tag. If your luggage ends up at a liquidation auction, you do NOT want the address tag to go with it. The NFC lookup approach severs the connection — the tag still works, but the contact path goes through a server you control, and you can revoke or change the contact info at any point.
How to maximize odds in the 90-day window
Here's a practical pre-flight checklist:
- External tag: Privacy-respecting (NFC or QR), reward offered, no home address.
- Internal tag: A duplicate identifier card inside the bag, clearly visible if opened.
- Photo before check-in: A quick phone photo of the contents and the bag's exterior.
- Tracking number on hand: Save a photo of your baggage claim ticket.
- PIR before leaving the airport: If the bag doesn't show, file a Property Irregularity Report at the airline counter before you exit. This is the single most important step. Without a PIR, your claim is much harder.
- Daily WorldTracer checks: The airline tracking number gets updated as a bag moves. Most major airlines now provide a self-service portal.
- Day 21 follow-up: If still missing, file a formal claim with itemized contents and receipts. Don't wait until day 89.
- Day 60 escalation: A polite but firm letter to the airline's customer relations department — with your PIR, claim, photos, and a clear ask — is appropriate at this stage.
The takeaway
Lost luggage isn't usually a permanent disaster, but it is a 90-day clock. Most bags come home in the first week. A small fraction don't. Of that small fraction, the bags with privacy-respecting external tags, internal cards, and photographed contents do measurably better — both at coming home, and at clean compensation if they don't.
If you're packing for a trip this week, the five minutes you spend on tagging is the cheapest insurance you can buy. After 90 days, the only insurance you have is whatever paperwork you remembered to keep.
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