We flew to LIH last night, and due to the strong headwinds, AS had to bump a half dozen people and offload 50 bags. This was handled very poorly by the ground crews in SEA and LIH. In SEA, some operations manager came on board and announced that they might have to unload some bags, then came back 20 minutes later to announce that everything was fine and all bags would get to fly along; half hour later, another announcement came that 50 bags (out of 90 checked) had been unloaded.

During the flight, the FAs contacted the passengers whose bags were on board, and told the others that the ground staff in LIH were already preparing lost luggage paperwork and would have information about when the luggage would arrive. (The official story line was that the plane to HNL -"which departs 15 minutes after this flight"- would bring the luggage, even though it, presumably, would be dealing with similar headwinds).

Upon arrival in LIH, the AS lost luggage counter was staffed by one agent, who seemed blissfully unaware of the situation; later, as a line of 50 travelers had formed, two more agents turned up. No arrangements had been made, and no further information was available.

Obviously, some passengers were very upset (and I'm sure their mood will only get worse as the hours go by and their luggage fails to show up). I totally understand the need to take on extra fuel during these strong headwinds, but it's evident that a 757 or other larger plane wouldn't have had this problem. I guess LIH is at the upper end of a 737's range, and they're just not cut out for 6 1/2 hr flights.

I will make sure to go back to 757 flights, even though I vastly preferred the AS F experience to NW. In addition, I hope that AS will improve its handling of such irregularities.