Bali Travelers Left Furious After Airline Removes Baggage From Flight Without Explanation

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Travelers heading to Bali to enjoy the Christmas and New Year holidays were left furious after Jetstar removed their luggage from their flight. In a strange set of circumstances, luggage on two flights heads to Denpasar, one from Perth and another from Melbourne, on the 28th December. The saga left hundreds of travelers without their bags containing all their essentials.

Only once both flights had landed in Bali did passengers learn that their bags hadn’t yet made it to Bali. Many passengers took to social media to call out the airline for removing their bags from the flight. Declan Carruthers and Somaya O’Donnell were two frustrated travelers whose luggage was removed from flight JQ116 from Perth of Denpasar. 

In a post on social media, O’Donnell wrote “$1300 return flight, no bags for four days, zero updates, and a helpline that doesn’t speak English. What a lol Jetstar Australia you suck”. Her partner, Carruthers, told reporters that he could only watch from the plane as luggage was removed before take off.

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When he asked staff what was happening, he was told that bag were being removed due to ‘bad weather’ in Perth despite it being 30 degrees and sunny and no further information. Carruthers said, “It’s quite pathetic for Jetstar not to communicate with their customers to let us know our bags weren’t on the plane.”

Other passengers shared their experiences online, sharing that the phone went unanswered when they tried to contact Jetstar to establish where their bags were. Taking matters into their own hands and desperate to find out where their bags were, they reached out to I Gusti Ngurah rai International Airport who could eventually send a photo of their luggage at the terminal.

Passengers only found out later that all the bags had arrived by the 1st January following a public statement from Jetstar but they had still not to received any direct communication from the airline. Assuming the worst, many travelers impacted by the situation had to buy new clothes and other essentials in the meantime. 

A spokesperson for Jetstar told the Daily Mail Australia, “Due to thunderstorms around Bali on Wednesday, we had to carry more fuel on some of our flights to Denpasar, in case we needed to divert to a different airport. This meant we were not able to carry all the checked bags on two of our flights”.

“We know it’s frustrating when your bags aren’t available when you land and we thank customers for the feedback that we need to provide more regular updates. We’ll review our processes so we can do better next time. We also thank customers for their patience.”

The news comes as another blunder for Jetstar, who evidently experienced an operational nightmare on the 28th of December. On the same day a Jetstar flight had to return to Australia just an hour out from landing in Denpasar.

The Jetstar JQ35 service carrying passengers from Melbourne to the holiday resort island had to turn back 4.5 hours into the flight after the crew was informed that they did not have permission to land at Ngurah Rai. The following day Jester issued a statement to confirm their side of the story after disgruntled passengers took to social media to lambast them once again. 

The Jetstar spokesperson explained, “We swapped yesterday’s Melbourne to Bali service to a larger Boeing 787 aircraft to carry more customers during the holidays…Unfortunately, due to a miscommunication, the aircraft swap was not approved by the local regulator in Indonesia”.

“As soon as we became aware, the flight returned to Melbourne, and we have rebooked passengers on a flight later today. We know this has been an extremely frustrating experience for customers and sincerely apologize for what happened… We’ve begun a review to understand how the miscommunication happened so we can prevent it from occurring again”.