Lost luggage, €7,000 of receipts, the airline only compensated €300

I had the misfortune of China Eastern Airlines losing my luggage. It's been several months now, with no more hope of finding it.

My fiancée's jewellery box was inside, and I can provide at least €2,000 of invoices for the contents. However, China Eastern is only offering €300 in compensation. And AirAdvisor didn't help at all — not one bit.

It was a flight from Japan to Paris with a connection in Shanghai.

What can I do to ramp up the pressure? Or are there basically no laws protecting me because my flight was from China to the EU, not from the EU to China?

While you are unlikely to get compensation for the full value, the airline is quite likely to owe you a lot more than 300 euros, not quite sure where that figure comes from.

Luggage (loss, damage, delays) is not covered by EC261 at all, so whether you flew to or from the EU is not relevant.

Since this is an international flight between signatories of the convention, what covers your case is the Montreal Convention. Among other things, it sets the procedure for declaring lost luggage, the timeline, and the limits on compensation, currently about 1860 euros per passenger.

There’s a good article on the topic on Forbes which gives a lot of details, so I recommend you read it.

Some of the flight compensation agencies strictly only deal with EC261 claims, so if you do not want to deal with the claim yourself, you’ll need to find an agency (or a lawyer) who knows how to deal with the Montreal Convention.

To be clear, it's perfectly possible to be covered for a higher value by the airline, but that means declaring the value before the flight, and paying a premium for that. Insurance, basically.

Which brings us to the other alternative: your travel insurance, or in some cases, some other insurance you may have which could possibly cover this (credit card, home insurance...). But most will probably balk at the notion of "undeclared jewellery in checked bag".