Your Lost Bag Is Worth About $2,050 — If You Know the Rule

The short answer

When an airline loses your checked bag, it owes you money under a treaty — and the ceiling is a specific number that went up in June 2025. Under the Montreal Convention 1999, as revised by ICAO’s five-year review, the international baggage liability limit is now 1,519 SDRs per passenger, effective 28 June 2025 (up from 1,288). At the 11 October 2026 rate of 0.738327 XDR/USD, that is about US$2,057. The US Department of Transportation, on its own baggage page (updated 29 October 2025), publishes the same 1,519 SDR figure and converts it to roughly $2,175 USD.

On a domestic US flight the ceiling is different again — and higher: the DOT allows carriers to limit liability to $4,700 per passenger. And separately, a 2024 US rule now forces airlines to refund the checked-bag fee when a bag is “significantly delayed” — 12 hours domestically, 15 or 30 hours internationally.

Almost nobody claims any of it. A traveller on r/travel in February 2026 — bag unresolved past three weeks with Vueling — was offered €500 against a ceiling they themselves worked out was around €1,900. The gap between €500 and the ceiling is the subject of this post.

Correction to a figure this site nearly published

An earlier draft of this post put the ceiling at 1,288 SDRs (~$1,750). That figure is now out of date. ICAO’s regular five-year review raised the Montreal limits and the increase took effect 28 June 2025: baggage destruction, loss, damage and delay went from 1,288 to 1,519 SDR per passenger, and cargo from 22 to 26 SDR/kg. The DOT’s baggage page carries the current number. If you see 1,288 quoted anywhere — including older versions of our own content — it describes the pre-June-2025 ceiling. The number is worth correcting loudly because it is exactly the kind of figure people budget and file claims against, and a stale ceiling under-claims by roughly $300. ICAO announced the revision in December 2024 and gave carriers a six-month window to update their documents; there is no further 2026 revision activity — the next scheduled five-year review falls around 2029-2030.

What the Montreal Convention actually says

The 1999 Convention sets a strict liability regime for checked baggage:

• Strict liability up to 1,519 SDRs per passenger for loss, damage or delay to checked baggage — the carrier is liable without you having to prove fault.
• Above that ceiling, liability continues only if you can prove the carrier was at fault.
• The carrier cannot contract out of this. It can only offer you more, not less.

That last point is the one that matters: the ceiling is a floor the airline is legally required to meet, not a cap on generosity. The EU’s passenger-rights page states the same principle — the airline “is liable” for lost, damaged or delayed checked luggage — and adds that you can obtain a higher limit if you declare valuable items in advance.

Domestic vs international is a different ceiling. If your whole journey is inside the US, the Montreal Convention does not apply; the DOT instead permits carriers to limit liability to $4,700 per passenger — nearly double the international SDR ceiling. Cross-border itineraries fall under the 1,519 SDR regime. Know which one your trip is before you file, because the number you are owed depends on it.

Why the figure is quoted in so many currencies. The SDR (Special Drawing Right) is an IMF basket currency, not a fixed dollar amount, so the real-world value of the ceiling floats. The same 1,519 SDR limit is published as ~$2,175 by the DOT and ~$2,057 when converted through the 11 October 2026 reference rate; the EU restates the regime in euros as “approximately €1,300.” These are the same treaty limit converted through different currencies on different days — which is why you should re-check the SDR value on the day you file rather than trusting a number you read months earlier.

The two 21-day clocks — and the refund rule nobody uses

There are two different 21-day provisions, and they do different things. The “21-day rule” is often described as one rule; the Montreal Convention actually carries two:

• Article 17(3) — the bag becomes treatable as lost. If checked baggage “has not arrived at the expiration of twenty-one days after the date on which it ought to have arrived,” the passenger may enforce contract-of-carriage rights — i.e. treat it as lost. This is the 21 days people mean when they say “after 21 days it’s lost.”
• Article 31(2) — the complaint deadline, and the clock that actually bites. For a delayed bag, your complaint must be lodged “at the latest within twenty-one days from the date on which the baggage or cargo have been placed at his or her disposal” — or “no action shall lie against the carrier, save in the case of fraud.” Read that carefully: the 21 days runs from when the bag is placed at your disposal, not from the flight date. Miss that window and the delay claim is gone. (Damage claims are shorter — 7 days from receipt; cargo, 14 days.)

So there is no single “21-day rule.” One provision turns a bag into a loss after three weeks; the other extinguishes your delayed-bag claim if you do not complain within three weeks of the bag turning up. Both matter, and they run from different dates.

There is, separately, no US DOT rule forcing a bag “lost” after 21 days. An earlier draft of this post repeated that belief; it is wrong. A full-text search of 14 CFR Part 254 (domestic baggage liability) and Part 234 (mishandled-baggage reporting) finds no 21-day provision. The DOT states instead: “Most airlines will declare a bag lost between five and fourteen days after the flight, but this can vary from one airline to another.” So the practical clock for a lost-bag claim is set by your carrier, somewhere in that 5-to-14-day band — while the treaty’s own Article 17(3) treats the bag as lost at 21 days. Know both.

The refund rule that covers the bag fee, not the bag. Since 28 October 2024, US carriers must refund your checked-baggage fee when the bag is “significantly delayed” — the DOT’s final rule of 26 April 2024 (89 FR 32760), codified at 14 CFR 260.5. “Significantly delayed” has hard thresholds (14 CFR 260.2): 12 hours domestically, 15 hours internationally where the non-stop segment is 12 hours or less, and 30 hours where that segment exceeds 12 hours. File a Mishandled Baggage Report and the fee comes back within 7 business days (card) or 20 calendar days. Note the scope: this refunds the fee, not the value of the bag’s contents — that is the separate liability claim above.

One thing EU261 does not do. Regulation (EC) 261/2004 — the flight-delay compensation rule — awards no compensation at all for lost, delayed or damaged baggage. Article 12 is the only hook, and it runs the other way: any EU261 compensation already paid can be deducted from a baggage claim. In the EU, your baggage rights are the Montreal Convention’s, full stop.

What this means for you

• Photograph the bag and its contents before you check it. A dated photo and a packing list is the difference between a documented claim and a shrug.
• Declare valuables at check-in, every time. If the contents are worth more than the ceiling, request the higher limit in advance — the EU rule requires it “at the latest when you check-in.” It is the cheapest insurance against the one rule that voids most claims.
• Track the two clocks separately. Note (a) when the bag ought to have arrived, and (b) if it eventually turns up, the date it was placed at your disposal — that is when the Article 31(2) complaint window starts.
• Claim the bag-fee refund after the delay thresholds pass. 12 hours domestic, 15/30 international. It is money the airline already owes under a rule they do not advertise.
• Ask for the ceiling by name. “Under the Montreal Convention I am entitled to 1,519 SDRs for a lost bag” is a different conversation from “can you help me with my bag.” The €500 offer in the Vueling thread was made to someone who had not yet invoked the current number.
• Buy travel insurance for the expensive items anyway. The ceiling is roughly $2,050 (or $4,700 on a purely domestic US trip). A full camera kit or production laptop exceeds it, and insurance covers the excess.

What we could not verify

• The DOT page via our own fetch. transportation.gov is Akamai-walled to our tooling at every route we tried (curl, headless Chromium, and a real ChromeDriver session all refused), so the DOT figures above — 1,519 SDRs, ~$2,175, the $4,700 domestic cap, the 5-to-14-day statement, the 28 June 2025 effective date — were retrieved first-party by a delegated scout rather than re-pulled by us in-session. They are quoted as the DOT’s own published words with the page’s stated date; a fresh first-party pull would harden them.
• The ICAO source for the limit revision. ICAO’s own news page returned only a shell of HTML with no body text, so the December-2024-announcement / 28-June-2025-effective revision was corroborated through a law-firm summary and, decisively, through the DOT’s current page stating 1,519 SDR. The Montreal text itself (Articles 17(3), 19, 22, 31(2)) was read from IATA’s full-text copy.
• 2026 mishandling volumes. A secondary press release citing DOT data reports US carriers mishandled 1,052,493 checked bags in January-June 2026 (0.49 per 100 bags, improved from 0.52) — but this comes from a travel-PR site, not the DOT Air Travel Consumer Report PDF itself, which we did not extract. Treat the volume figure as indicative, not primary.
• Per-carrier “lost” thresholds. The DOT gives a 5-to-14-day band but no carrier-by-carrier table; we did not compile one. Check your specific airline’s contract of carriage.

What travellers say (dated, first-hand):

• “It has now been over 21 days and I still haven’t received it… I requested compensation, and they offered me only €500, which I find absolutely ridiculous. According to what I’ve researched, under the Montreal Convention, the max compensation can be up to around €1,900, so €500 makes no sense at all considering the weight of the luggage, the distance of the trip.” — u/_shaiane, r/travel, 13 February 2026, on a Vueling bag unresolved past three weeks.

• “In spite of detailed receipts, they have barely reimbursed 15% of our outlays with no explanation other than: ‘After a further detailed and thorough review of your case, we confirm that our decision remains unchanged. The situation has been assessed in accordance with our internal policies, and it fully complies with our obligations under the applicable regulations.’” — u/doctorbobster, r/Delta, 29 August 2026, on a Delta/KLM baggage claim.

• “3 days delayed and they claim they will do a 50 euro lump sum per day for a total of 150 Euro…” — u/Stoltlallare, r/travel, 17 September 2026, on a delayed-bag offer well under the delay regime.

• Boundary: Reddit is blocked to our normal tooling (403), so these quotes were retrieved through the platform’s own JSON with their created_utc timestamps for the exact dates. They are published because each carries a date and a named account; undated sentiment was excluded. FlyerTalk could not be reached (Cloudflare bot-verification wall), so no FlyerTalk material is included.