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Month: June 2024

Travel Troubleshooter: ITA Airways lost my luggage. Why won’t it cover my expenses?

Travel Troubleshooter: ITA Airways lost my luggage. Why won’t it cover my expenses?

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DEAR TRAVEL TROUBLESHOOTER: I recently flew from Rome to Palermo, Italy, on ITA Airways. Unfortunately, my luggage did not. I filed a claim immediately at Palermo Airport. I didn’t receive my luggage until the end of my trip a week later.

Christopher Elliott, the Travel Troubleshooter ...
Christopher Elliott, the Travel Troubleshooter

Since my luggage was missing the entire trip, I had to make purchases, including luggage. My coat was in my suitcase. Thank God another woman on my tour lent me her coat. The weather was cold with heavy rain.

So many things that I needed were difficult to purchase because we returned from tours late in the day. I think I did a good job of keeping my cost of purchases to a minimum, but I still spent $992. I have copies of my receipts.

ITA Airways wants to reimburse me $733. I’d like to be fully reimbursed. Can you help me?

— Jacqueline Bartolini, Bradenton, Florida

ANSWER: ITA Airways is liable for the entire $992. Under the Montreal Convention, if an airline loses, damages or delays your checked luggage, you’re entitled to compensation up to an amount of about $1,400 (unless there’s damage caused by an “inherent” defect in the baggage). read more

Struggling Our Next Energy enters strategic partnership with Foxconn

Struggling Our Next Energy enters strategic partnership with Foxconn

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Electric vehicle battery startup Our Next Energy has entered a strategic partnership with Foxconn to keep the financially struggling startup afloat.

Our Next Energy recently told employees about the partnership with the Taiwan-headquartered manufacturing giant, sources close to the situation told Crain’s Detroit Business. Employees were told the partnership is aimed at accelerating the scaling of the U.S. battery industry and making Our Next Energy and Foxconn major players in it.

The deal involves Foxconn infusing cash and taking an ownership stake in the company, but it is not an acquisition, nor does it represent a change of control for the startup, one of the sources said. Further details of the structure are still being worked out.

An Our Next Energy spokesman declined to comment on “rumors or speculation” but provided a statement in response to an inquiry about the deal.

“As part of Our Next Energy’s efforts to build an American battery industry, the company engages with several potential partners on an ongoing basis to build a battery cell factory in Michigan and accelerate the country’s transition to electrification,” the company said in the statement. “Due to the confidential nature of these discussions, ONE does not comment on rumors or speculation about any potential partners.” read more

SpaceX queues up Space Coast retry of Starlink mission with replacement booster

SpaceX queues up Space Coast retry of Starlink mission with replacement booster

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SpaceX is back at the launch pad Sunday with an updated rocket to finish off a Starlink mission it tried to send up earlier this month.

A Falcon 9 on the Starlink 10-2 mission is targeting liftoff at 1:15 p.m. during a launch window that runs until 5:03 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40. Its payload is 22 more Starlink satellites for the company’s growing internet constellation that now numbers more than 6,100 satellites in orbit.

The launch attempt comes nine days since SpaceX last attempted to knock out the mission on June 14. That attempt had a rare scrub as the countdown clock reached 0 and the rocket was ultimately brought back from the pad to allow for last week’s ASTRA 1P satellite launch to go up instead.

But now the rocket is back with a new first-stage booster, which will be attempting its 11th flight with a recovery landing planned on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX did not reveal what was wrong with the original booster that was trying to fly for the 16th time. read more