When items vanish from your luggage, can you trust your airline to make it right?

Bonnie Roeder-Burns thought she knew the answer when Iberia Airlines misplaced her suitcase and then someone pilfered items from it. 

She did not.

Her bag sat abandoned in Madrid’s Terminal T4 for 12 days. She knew exactly where it was — her Apple AirTag blinked back at her from the Spanish airport. 

But when the bag finally arrived back home, it looked like someone had rifled through it. Over $1,000 worth of clothing and cosmetics had vanished. 

Iberia Airlines offered her just $98 as compensation for the delayed luggage. 

For the theft? Nothing. 

“Their policy says they only pay if your bag is damaged,” she says. “That’s absurd.”

This case raises critical questions for anyone who’s ever checked a bag:  

• Can airlines refuse compensation for stolen items if your luggage isn’t damaged?  
• What proof do you need to show your belongings were pilfered?  
• How do you fight back when an airline refuses to compensate you for pilfered luggage? 

So what happened to Roeder-Burns? Let’s have a look.

“They wanted photos of a broken zipper or torn fabric”

Roeder-Burns’s ordeal began when she flew from Barcelona to Chicago via Madrid. One of her bags never arrived. 

Her AirTag showed it was stranded in Madrid. For eight days, she called Iberia’s lost luggage team daily, pleading with them to retrieve the suitcase from Terminal T4. 

“I became the unofficial baggage tracker,” she says.  

The bag finally arrived at her home in Minnesota with gaping holes in its contents. A turquoise Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress, T3 hair styling tools, and Laura Mercier makeup were gone. 

Iberia’s response? 

“We regret to inform you that you are not entitled to compensation,” it said.

Why? There was no visible damage to the suitcase.  

“They wanted photos of a broken zipper or torn fabric,” Roeder-Burns says. “But thieves don’t slash suitcases anymore. They just unzip them.”  

Can airlines refuse compensation for stolen items if your luggage isn’t damaged?  

Yes — and they often do. Airlines routinely hide behind fine print that limits liability to “verifiable damage” during transport. 

Airlines also love to blame third parties, like the TSA.

But consumer protection suggest a different conclusion  

The Montreal Convention, governing international flights, requires carriers to compensate passengers up to approximately $1,700 for lost, damaged, or delayed baggage. Crucially, it doesn’t require visible suitcase damage to claim stolen items. 

(Airlines conflate damage with loss to dodge payouts. But if your property disappears in their care, that’s a loss.)

I have more information in my ultimate guide to lost luggage.

Iberia’s initial rejection of Roeder-Burns’ claim leaned on its internal policy, not international law. 

What proof do you need to show your belongings were pilfered? 

Airlines have requirements for proving loss. Most of them won’t process a claim without receipts and police reports.

If you take a picture of the contents of your luggage before you leave, that will give you the best shot at proving your loss. 

Documentation is critical. Roeder-Burns submitted police reports and purchase receipts.

Iberia still demanded “true invoices” — not screenshots — for replacement items.  

Police reports are the hardest. Most travelers can’t file police reports quickly enough. Roeder-Burns discovered the theft in Minnesota — two flights and seven time zones from where the theft likely occurred in Madrid. Fortunately, the police report created the documentation that allowed the process to move forward. But it was still not enough.

The most important aspect of any luggage claim is timing. Airlines give you anywhere from a few days to a week to file a claim for pilfered luggage. If you miss the deadline, they will deny your claim. It happened to this Frontier passenger.

How do you fight back when an airline refuses to compensate you for pilfered luggage? 

Airlines often refuse requests for compensation, even if they are meticulously documented. (In a perfect world, airlines wish there were regulations that explicitly remove any liability for checked bags, but the law says otherwise.)

• Provide additional documentation. Most luggage claims are denied on a technicality. Maybe the receipts were not original. Maybe you filled out the wrong form. So your first step is to jump through the hoops and file the right documentation. Do this as soon as possible.

• File an appeal. Roeder-Burns could have appealed the rejection in writing to one of the Iberia Airlines executives we list on our consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. These high-level managers often read emails from customers and respond to them, clearing some of the red tape and leading to a faster resolution.

• Get outside help. Airlines are accountable to regulators such as the U.S. Department of Transportation. If they aren’t following the law, these agencies can prod them into doing the right thing. Also, our advocacy organization is pretty effective at applying gentle pressure to an airline that has lost its way.

By supplying more documentation, appealing your case and getting a third party involved, you stand a better chance of getting your pilfered luggage case resolved quickly.

Will Iberia pay for the pilfered luggage?

Our advocacy team reviewed Roeder-Burns’ case and were not impressed. Obviously, someone had broken into her bag while it was misplaced. Obviously, items were missing. And obviously, the reason for turning down her claim — that there was no visible damage to the bag — was laughable.

Our advocate Dwayne Coward contacted Iberia on her behalf. Dwayne is well-versed in EU compensation laws, and he quickly made it clear to the airline that a review of her case was in its best interests. It agreed.

Less than a week later, we heard back from her.

“Thank you so very much for your help,” she told us. “I received an email from them saying they will pay me an additional $500 for a total of $611, which I have now received. It really helped me to cover the cost of replacing the items that were stolen.”