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Her life was on the air-line.
A freelance content creator says she’s thousands of dollars poorer after claiming an airline lost a bag containing nearly all of her belongings while she was relocating to another country.
“I was quite stressed because it had everything I owned,” Bianca Beemer told CTV News.
The 30-year-old influencer, who regularly shares travel content on TikTok and Instagram, had been moving from Toronto, Canada, to Berlin, Germany, in August 2024.
To prep for her new life, she whittled decades-worth of possessions into a manageable chunk that she crammed into two bags — a carry-on suitcase and her boyfriend’s hockey bag, which she checked at the airport.
The carry-on was packed with camera equipment and other tools of her trade, while the duffel contained mostly sentimental items, including a scarf she inherited from her grandma who passed away from COVID.
The total value of her possessions: around $7,000.
Upon arrival at Toronto Pearson International Airport, Beemer was told she’d have to check the hockey bag at a special kiosk because it weighed 75 pounds.
“When I went to check my oversized bag, they asked me to pay in cash, which I thought was kind of bizarre,” claimed the influencer, who said she ended up forking over $277.
She then embarked on her multistop jaunt, first flying with Condor Airlines to Frankfurt and then hopping on a Lufthansa flight for the last leg to Berlin.
Unfortunately, when Beemer arrived a her final destination, she discovered that her bags hadn’t followed along.
Airport employees reportedly told her it was still in Frankfurt, whereupon the Canuck thought she’d have to turn right around and “go home.”
“I was still quite optimistic that my bag would show up because why wouldn’t my bag show up?” Beemer said, despite the devastating realization.
Fast forward five months — and her duffel has yet to surface.
Since the disappearance, Beemer has engaged in hundreds of interactions with Lufthansa and Condor, she claimed, spending hours on the phone and sending countless emails to try and crack the missing suitcase caper, which she detailed in various videos on her TikTok.
However, the globetrotter’s messages would often bounce back without a reply. In the rare event that she got ahold of an airline representative, they’d provide conflicting details on the location of her luggage, she said.
Beemer said she found the ordeal “super distressing,” lamenting, “This was not a bag that I had for vacation — this was a bag I had to move countries.”
Condor placed the blame on Lufthansa for dropping the ball, er, bag.
“‘According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) regulations, in the event of baggage delay or loss, the airline that last carried the baggage is responsible,” a spokesperson told the Daily Mail. “In Ms. Beemer’s case, this is Lufthansa, so unfortunately Condor is unable to provide any further information.”
Nonetheless, they offered to refund her baggage charges as a “gesture of sympathy.”
Lufthansa reps claimed that “reimbursement has been provided in correlation to what was listed on the missing item content list.”
However, Beemer claimed she was stiffed in both instances, insisting that she didn’t receive Condor’s luggage refund, while Lufthansa only reimbursed her for $1,500 of the bag’s $7,000 value.
However, flight experts have noted the latter figure would be in line with the Montreal Convention, a treaty that outlines liability limits for international air travel.
Either way, Beemer claimed that “no amount of money” can make up for the items the airlines lost.
“You can’t accumulate things over your life, and they hold meaning to you, and I can’t just go out and replace that,” she said.
