Originally Posted by
Kgmm77
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11D167 Safari/9537.53)
Based on my experience I don't agree that it's anything to do with economic conditions or cyclical. Its more secular. I had no trouble finding overhead space on full flights a decade ago.
Whilst I would agree those taking a sneaky third (or fourth) item should be dealt with first, I still don't think the numbers will add up, particularly in a world of more densely packed slimline seated cabins with more passengers bringing more bags.
Sadly, one of the best ways BA could've incentivised good behaviour, by fast delivery of checked bags, seems to have been a complete failure of design at T5 (as it was at T1).
By comparison, I've found T3 (AA, CX & SQ) much quicker.
Perhaps I am just lucky but I've never waited a long time for a bag at T5. E.G. Last Monday arriving off the BA104 from DXB - 40 minutes ahead of schedule, we were off at the B Pier quickly, straight on a train and there was no queue at all at Passport Control - straight through to baggage and the bags were already coming off. Collected bags and we were out to the short term car park - total time from getting off the plane to sitting in the car was 20 mins or so - we were on the M3 towards home before scheduled arrival time.
OK, so only my second arrival into T5 this year but previous experience has always been that we wait only 5 to 10 minutes for a bag from B Pier and only slightly longer from the C Pier. Considering the logistics, I think that is excellent timing.