gooselee

I think this is the most recent bag tracking thread - someone tell me if this better fits in an older DL app thread.

In case anyone was wondering about latency between bag scan and app update - I just plopped down in my seat leaving ATL and looked out the window to see my checked bag hanging out on the ramp ready to be loaded. For fun, I pulled up bag tracking in the app while watching the ramper scan each bag with his hand held doodad as he was placing it on the conveyor belt up to the plane - current status was "Routed to Carousel". After he scanned mine, I mashed the refresh button in the app. Results had already updated and now showed "Bag on Plane." There were no more than three seconds between the scan and me hitting refresh, and perhaps another three seconds before the results updated. I was pretty impressed with how quickly the update propagated to the app, since I wouldn't even want to guess how many individual bag scans are going through DL's systems at any given moment on a weekday morning.

Anyway, just a fun data point. Now off to the pointless complaints thread to gripe about how inaccurate DL bag tracking is - it said my bag was on the plane when in fact it was a good 15 feet outside the plane, still making its way up the loading belt!

3Cforme

Thanks for that careful observation and quick report.

rylan

I've seen a few minute delay between activity and update... for example I'll see the app now showing 'bag on plane' about 4-5 minutes after the time stamp on the activity.

StayingHomeIsBetter

Thanks for this bit of data (actually thanks for all of it ).

You experience confirms what I posted in another thread. The "Routed to Carousel" status that shows on the app indicates an intermediate stage in the process of getting bag from Plane A to Plane B.

It is extraneous information, unneeded by the PAX who only wants to know that the bag is on Plane B. And, it creates the risk that the PAX will interpret it as meaning that the bag has been erroneously diverted to the baggage claim carousel.

ryan182

When I travel with my dive gear I have a Lugloc device that I got when I bought a Trunkster that I put into the bag. This uses cell service to send location, so the location data is not as precise as what would be available with GPS but it also works in places where GPS signals might not be so great. In addition it has bluetooth that can be switched on in the baggage area for finding the bad when its close by, though in reality I find that by the time its close enough for the bluetooth to work you can usually use your eyes as well.

Zeeb

I was that person once a couple of years ago. I had a long layover and saw "routed to carousel" and called in to ask what that meant.

I disagree it is unneeded though, it probably needs to be called something less misleading but knowing that your bag made it to the airport and is still in the system and ready to be loaded on to your connection is worthwhile information. I've only ever seen it show up when I have a several hour long layover.

Zorak

Ditto, except I asked an airport employee who calmed me down

Unrelated, last month I saw this bag status in the app:



Which I thought was quite an amazing feat of efficiency, considering the inbound for my JFK-ATL flight was DL2350 ATL-JFK and hadn't even left ATL yet. (JFK-ATL had posted a delay, which was why I was looking in the first place.)

It later updated again:



still seems like bag-handling Sheena though (or a bug in the system) And I don't think there was a last-minute tail swap or anything like that that would have explained it.

Widgets

As someone who has to view bag tracking info for hours each shift, it's rare that ramp agents would prematurely scan a bag onboard anticipating that it'll be loaded, but it happens... rarely. Prematurely scanning bags to carousel is more common

Does the app show when that bag was "Removed from Bin/Container"? It's possible your bag was put on the plane and then offloaded but the offloading might not show on the app.

Zorak

Dunno, the trip was a month ago and I was not surprised to find that it doesn't return any results when I tried to look up the bag number just now

Even if it was loaded and then offloaded, to/from where? As I mentioned the aircraft was still at another airport 700+ miles away when it was allegedly loaded...

You mentioned "Removed from Bin/Container" though -- I didn't see that, but is there similarly a scan when a bag is loaded into a bin/container? I could believe that the first "loaded" at 07:52 was really the bag going into a bin/container that had been set aside for my flight, and the second "loaded" at 11:25 was the entire bin/container being scanned onto the flight. (I also screenshotted the flight status page for the inbound, which arrived at 10:57)

flyerCO

I'm curious why when I check in at JFK SP section that one of my bags is always "routed to customs area" This happens even when not flying international. Of my last four domestic flight reservations, at least one, but not all of my checked bags has this noted.

davetravels

I didn't know this thread existed . . . so, I don't really know if this has been reported upthread, or not, but I found this interesting . . . .

Twice in the last month, I left a bag at LAX for a couple of days. I can't remember the first reason, but, the second time was when I took a VDB, so, my bag went to LAX - and I went to SNA the next day. I figured I'd pick up my bag when I left LAX a few days later. . . . Anyway . . . .

When I checked my bag status on the app each time, there was a frequent new blip that my bag was in the LAX baggage office, with a time stamp anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours apart. I guess there's some kind of a scanner in the baggage office that detects the chipped bag tags and clocks them in whenever an agent activates the checking mechanism. Nice!

I'm also grateful for this technology, as, I flew up to SEA for a night, but didn't want to take my bag to SEA. I just happened to check, and saw that they SENT MY BAG TO SEA without my knowledge! I asked them to put it back on my flight back the next day, and I picked it up at LAX then!

Widgets

Baggage service agents manually scan bags on-hand within ~30 min of arrival when pulled off the carousel, and then they'll continue to be scanned across different shifts from different employees. Purging the on-hand list and rescanning everything in the office is a convenient way for researching lots of bags in DLTerm efficiently. It also provides visibility for customers and call center employees since each on-hand scan acknowledges (at best) the last time the bag was seen.

davetravels

The last time I had to pick up a bag at the LAX baggage office - - The office is quite large, with TONS of bags! It seems to me that it would be quite tedious to scan every single bag manually every 30, 60, 120 minutes or so.

gooselee

Re: Routed to Carousel - thus has caused me some confusion, as well. But I don't think it's just between two planes. I've also seen it between initial bag drop and "Bag on Plane" (most recently earlier this week on a domestic nonstop ex-ATL).

Perhaps a better label is something like "Bag in Sorting Area" or "Bag wandering around inner depths of airport underbelly"

skyrider117

...Depths of Mordor????