Interesting. All airports I have seen so far had these trays where you put your fragile items. Then you put the tray through the X-ray machine.
I have travelled with a laptop many times and never had this happen to me.

Thanks for the tip, will pay more attention in the future.

Andre
Check out my Photos

Well, not all airport are built to concern about customer properties or well-equipped. To them, it's just a bag and the personnels are just doing their works. It will be lot of trouble to file a claim on the loss. Better just tell them "it's a laptop" before putting on the ramp.

My friend enperienced that on an international airport. I doubt smaller airports have such facilities.

Anyway, it was a company's laptop. He'd have to answer that.  

If you notice the damage, would the airport pay for the passenger losses since it was their fault to begin with.

Let say i had file a complain to them regarding the damage to the laptop.  

I would say this is highly unlikely. I am not sure, but there may even be signs stating that they are not responsible for lost or stolen items. The only thing you can do is to put your jacket or something else soft in the tray below the laptop and then place the laptop on top. As I said, I have travelled a lot with my laptop and never had any damage, since I always put it in the tray. 

Ok, Always put it inside a tray and told them it was a laptop, handle with care. Or put it on top of a jacket.

Thanks for the tips.   We can guarantee the airport staff to handle properly our laptop.

Damaging customer properties when they carry out their works is definitely not "Lost or stolen". My friend's laptop was secured inside a laptop leather case. But the weight of the laptop itself (around 2.0kg ~ 2.5kg) may also contribute to the crack, even protected by the case, when it fell down from a ramp. The height from the floor to the ramp, shall we say 3 feet? It still broke.
 

May be, when it fell, the laptop's edge reached the floor first.

I defenitely feel your pain. What I meant to say was Lost, Stolen, Damaged ....

I would be surprised if they would consider paying you, but you could try to file a claim and see what happens. If you have a witness that can testify that the damage occured due to negligence on their part you may have a slim chance, but I seriously doubt it.

I once had a case, where I brought a laptop into a country when I was on a business trip. I got a fine for not paying taxes, since I imported it (yeah right) and I got a claim against me for trying to smuggle. 

After disproving them I got my money back (it was a large sum) but the claim stuck with me. Don't expect them to admit that they were wrong and dont expect anyone to stick up for the small people. Thats usually not how it works. So even if you go for it and file a claim, I would expect that the only thing you will get out of it is paperwork and grief.

Just make sure that the next time, noone touches your laptop but you. You put it on the conveyor belt and you take it off. Put it in the tray in the middle of the belt as they sometimes go back and forth. You may even have to turn it on to show its a working piece of technology (I had to do this several times with my cameras). 

Andre Check out my Photos

Your friend should have told customs that he was carrying a laptop thus additional care was required when passing it through the scanner. I think that if he was going to complain at the moment he could have been eligible for a refund!

Unless he knew this forum and read this thread before it happened. LOL 

I guess putting some notes like Fragile or Handle With Care will make the employees of airports take care of your belongings, if ever they have the chance to read that. They don't care on other's belongings as long as they have done their job in the airports. But as one of the comments given, not all airports are the same. There are some airports that really have good service.