We’ve all been there, when the bags on an airport carousel are rapidly thinning out and yours is still nowhere to be seen.
Queenslander Andrew Glykidis had that ominous feeling in Brisbane Airport on August 1, after he’d flown home with Qantas from Sydney.
His plane ticket cost $500, but what eventually got spat out onto the carousel would set him back four times that amount.
The 31-year-old architectural draftsman was travelling with his brother and sister-in-law, who had already scooped up their bags without an issue.
Glykidis, though, was left waiting.
The carousel was finally completely empty, and it was just the three of them; standing, watching, hoping.
Just as he was about to head for the Qantas lost baggage counter, Glykidis said his sister-in-law piped up.
“She was like, ‘Hang on, something’s coming through there now.'”
But Glykidis was unmoved. It was a weird, unrecognisable object.
They waited and the thing came closer
“Then she’s like, ‘Are you sure that’s not yours?’
“And I’m like, ‘holy shit, that’s my stuff!'”
He said his stomach dropped.
The chewed up remains of his luggage was “shoved in a plastic bag” and wrapped up with Qantas branded orange tape, he said.
“It honestly looked like it was fed to a bunch of pitbulls or hyenas.”
Photographs Glykidis shared with 9news.com.au showed his grey bag catastrophically shredded and torn open.
“When I bought it home and unpacked it my mum saw it and said, ‘did they feed it to a bunch of dogs or something?'”
In the almost four weeks since, Glykidis said he has been fighting Qantas to try and get a refund of $2000 for his lost and damaged items, including clothing, boots and personal gear.
Qantas promptly paid out $112 for the canvas bag, he said, but the airline is yet to approve his claim for contents.
Glykidis is angry Qantas have demanded he file a police report or statutory declaration as part of his claim.
“That’s insinuating that I have to prove that I’m not lying,” he said.
He has tried to contact Qantas countless times, he said, and spent a total of many hours on hold.
“It’s literally a merry-go-round.
“They keep saying, ‘we’ll escalate it, we’ll get back to you in 24 to 48 hours.'”
Glykidis said the experience had caused great frustration and “unnecessary stress”.
He feels like Qantas has “run away” and left him to deal with the aftermath.
9news.com.au has contacted Qantas for comment multiple times.
Today the airline announced an underlying loss of $1.9 billion, as its engineers begin industrial action over a pay dispute.
