(This actually happened a little while ago)

I met my parents in the Bahamas for a weekend. I flew DL ATL-NAS and they flew AA LAX-MIA-NAS. Return flights out of NAS were about 5 minutes apart so we went to the airport together. They checked in 3 bags at AA counter and I checked in 1 at DL.

We each came to NAS with 2 bags -- one of my bags was full of clothes my parents had left when they visited me in ATL a month earlier. Rather than ship it back, I figured I'd use this trip since we both get free bags on our respective airline - I'm DL FO, mom's lifetime AA Plat thanks to a Citi biz cc.

After check-in at NAS, we made our way behind the desks to security. There's a belt where you put any checked in bags for every airline. I checked the bag tags and placed the bags on the belt, making sure that any old bag-tags and barcodes were taken off (especially on the bag I gave to them).

After they boarded their AA flight, I got a call from the DL GA to come to the desk. I thought it was a last-minute upgrade, but instead she told me that one of my bags had been tagged incorrectly and that I had a new claim tag. I didn't really think much of this at the moment. The possibility of what ended up happening dawned on me as we touched down in Atlanta.

At ATL, while waiting for my checked bag, I saw a pretty familiar bag -- indeed, it was the bag I gave my parents, only instead of an AA tag for MIA/LAX, it had been replaced with a DL tag to ATL with my name on it (even though it did not have my name anywhere on the bag, save for the last name).

I took the bag off the carousel (what else would I do?), took it to the DL desk (pretty empty, Sunday night at 9pm), and explained the situation. Delta agent cut me off in the middle of the story and said Delta could not do anything and told me that "once I take the bag off the carousel, it's not Delta's problem anymore." (I retorted that this bag has my name on it wrongfully and that if I hadn't grabbed it off the carousel, who knows what would happen to it?).

Tired of the rude agent, I went over the north terminal to the AA desk where I spoke with probably the nicest agent I've ever encountered. Fortunately, I had my parents' record locator and itinerary and explained the situation -- the bag was routed to LAX and at my parents' house the next day.


So after this situation, I still wonder: What would have happened if I hadn't seen that bag on the carousel? It's a bag that was checked on AA from NAS-MIA-LAX, yet somehow put on DL from NAS-ATL.