[sarah levine simon]

Sarah Levine Simon
109 ****** Avenue
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601

Delta Airline
PO Box 20706
1030 Delta Boulevard
Atlanta, Ga 30320-6001

Lufthansa
750 Lexington Ave
New York, NY 10022

January 24, 2009

Flight #106 jan 10, 2009 0062155513855

Re: Business trip debacle due to lost luggage and Failure by Delta and Lufthansa to search for luggage: and to provide temporary assistance in the form of money for clothing etc. until luggage could be located.

History: My daughter Abigail Simon is a Ballerina with the Joffrey Ballet Company in Chicago. Between tours with the Joffrey she frequently does guest work. I manage that work. Hence, I booked a flight and hotel room for her to Amsterdam and scheduled an audition for the Dutch National Ballet and other companies in striking distance from Amsterdam. The cost of the airline ticket was $1500. USD, plus expenses to and from airports. The cost of the hotel in USD for the five days she planned to stay was aproximately 500. There were expenses to replace clothing, pointe shoes, cosmetics, and there were overseas phone expenses and local phone expenses from a hotel. Food expenses added up as she waited for her bags. Potentially there was a loss of revenue because she was unable to pursue future bookings.

The scheduled direct flight out of Kennedy Airport to Amsterdam was cancelled; and she was put on another flight to Frankfurt, Germany with a connection to a Lufthansa flight to Amsterdam (Schipol Airport). When she arrived in Amsterdam, her luggage containing 7 pairs of pointe shoes (too many to put into carry-on baggage), dance wear, her clothes, winter coat, cosmetics, etc. had not arrived. She notified the baggage handler at the airport and was promised that the luggage would be delivered to her hotel in the morning. It was not. Nor did it come the following day, or for the remaining days of her stay in Amsterdam. I had to put money into her account to purchase pointe shoes, a coat and something to wear.

She spent nearly two hundred dollars on the hotel phone, on hold with Lufthansa, Delta, baggage claims. I worked at my end to trace the bag, as did our travel agent ****** Avenue Travel. All to no avail. Neither airline was cooperative, there was a total failure in the customer service of both airlines. They passed the blame onto one another, never offered even enough money to get her through the week. It was necessary to cancel many of the leads. Each day of her stay in Amsterdam, delivery of the bag was promised for the next. It was never delivered. She returned to New York after obtaining promises that the bag would be delivered there. It took another 3 days after her return, with daily promises to deliver the bag before it finally was. The consumer is powerless. If this trip hadn't been planned far in advance, the cost of the ticket would have been 3500. USD. With our planning, we lost close to 2000 USD.

This was an aborted, wasted business trip. One other reason our economy is in such a grave state is that the airlines have a stranglehold on small businesses. There is another issue larger than the loss of one person's baggage. The inability of these airlines to keep track of the passenger's bags is also a serious security issue. Abby's bag sat on a carousel and Delta and was never sent to Lufthansa or at least that's what Lufthansa claims. That could give someone evil ample opportunity to plant a bomb or other device in the luggage.


I demand that Lufthansa, and Delta make restitution for the cost of this trip to the maximum allowable in small claims court . I furthermore expect to have the 15 dollar baggage handling fee returned to us.