Lost luggage in Charles de Gaulle airport CDG Roissy

I have lost my luggage at Charles de Gaulle airport on arrival, meaning that I arrived at CDG and my luggage wasn't on the belt. What to do ?

At the time of writing 2026, the procedure is purposefully muddy. And CDG airport is a champion at losing luggage literally top 2 worldwide ! https://www.speedylife.fr/bagages-perdus-paris-cdg-dans-le-top-3-mondial-des-aeroports-a-eviter/

But here’s what I learned and my understanding.

They lose an unbelievable amount of luggage, and the vast majority of them will be returned to you within 48h, so step 1, don't panic.

If you luggage actually arrived on the belt taken by mistake or arrived on a different belt

Immediately check if the bag didn’t arrive in the oversized luggage belt, which is a second belt for items with weird shapes or sizes too small or too big.

Immediately check if there's a 100% similar bag on the belt that nobody took and take pictures of the tags, inform the staff that it's probably a mixup.

If your luggage didn't arrive on the belt, but still has your infos on it

First of all, immediately go to the lost luggage section. For me in CDG T2E it was on the left of the luggage belt a nice counter with Air France written all over it. This was before leaving the belt luggage area, quite hard to come back once you leave.

Register everything with the help of Air France.

If you have an AirTag number give it to them. This will help tremendously.

Keep your luggage receipt at all cost, not just your plane ticket, your luggage RECEIPT. In fact take a picture of it RIGHT NOW and your plane ticket. Also take a picture of the luggage tags of all the bags which actually arrived in your family and check the little stickers on the bags themselves, to see if they match, so you have actual proof of which luggage didn't arrive. Because it could happen that your luggage number was given to another person flying with you and there was a mixup between you and your brother so actually the missing luggage is under his name, not yours. So they search for your luggage in vain because it's his that is missing.

The airline will refund all your bare necessities which were inside your luggage, like if you need to buy clothes toothbrush etc… for the first few days, so do keep the receipts.

Apparently for the first 7 days it is Air France who will help you, regardless which company you flew with they will assist. After that it is the airlines responsibility entirely and Air France won't lift a finger.

If your luggage didn't arrive on the belt and has no name visible

You have 4 days to list the contents of your luggage because that’s how they find them if there's no identification on it. Possible to do after, but in theory should be done within 4 days. This file is called a "BIF", then the staff of the airline you took has access to an online platform which lists the contents of the luggage found, brand, size etc... and they will only bother searching this website if you push them. Of course they will never give you direct access for understandable privacy reasons. So call them every day, ask them to check the database, ask them item by item if there's a partial match. In my case they simply didn't tell us about this procedure and just asked us to "wait" without even having us fill the BIF, so chances of finding the luggage was zero because not a soul was looking.

All the luggage without identification are stored in a secret place full of luggage called the “Kube” and they are registered into an online system.

Here is what “le Kube” looks like in case you’re wondering : https://www.travelguys.fr/2014/05/24/visite-des-trieurs-bagages-a-paris-charles-de-gaulle/

After 7 days Air France will stop helping you, it's entirely up to the airline.

If all else fails

After 21 days the luggage is considered officially lost and you can ask for a refund up to an amount at the airline itself (Unless you’re able to prove purposeful misconduct in which case there's no cap)

Here is a letter in French that you can send to make your claim, https://www.quechoisir.org/lettre-type-avion-bagages-perdus-ou-abimes-n1055/ but apparently there are some paid services online that can help do it for you (airadvisor and all but I didn't used don't know if it's good).

I had my luggage lost 5 times and it always came back relatively quickly. Except once when it still hasn't arrived which at the time of writing has been 18 days. Maybe won't arrive ever, we'll see.

The one important deadline not to miss is to have a proof you started legal procedures before the 21 days, just registering is not enough because the airline may not be in good faith and deny you registered any claims when you clearly did. So start legal procedures early and make sure it's properly registered, and at the 21 days mark with the proof that you did start legal procedures before that, you can do the refund procedure.

I haven't done the refund procedure yet, and will update this question if it comes to that, but my understanding is that you should list the content and the prices. If you have receipts all the better, but they might not require it if your request is reasonable.

My big lesson are :

1- Put an AirTag inside all of your bags. Check they have batteries before flying. At bare minimum have a picture of your luggage and know the brand name.

2-Push them like crazy, in my case the officer in charge at China Eastern simply wasn't looking. He just told me "bah it's probably stolen nothing I can do, can't check the video tapes or anything". And like a fool I believed him. But actually there was a lot he could do. He could have me fill the "BIF" (which list luggage content) and search the database to see if any luggages found matched partially or fully the description or content of my luggage. But he did none of those things because I was too polite and simply let him "do his job" without calling or emailing for 18 days. Instead I should have asked him to check the database every single day, calling him on the phone and staying on the phone as he querries the database. Because absolutely zero trust he would do it on his own and as a matter of fact he didn't.

3- Do not check in anything you absolutely can’t live without every day (medicine and medical devices)

4-Do not to leave anything more expensive than 1000€ in my checked luggage because regardless they will never refund you more than the ceiling value of 1789€ per passenger, not per bag, per passenger (at the time of writing). So if you left your jewellery box in there, you’re out of luck.