Originally Posted by
carrotjuice
Curiously, why would crew bags come out first when crew are the last people to disembark the plane and make their way to the carousel?
Crew normally aren't the last to the carousel. A plane doesn't take particularly long to disembark (less than 5 minutes once the doors are open, in general). Crew lanes and more straightforward immigration procedures in outports help too.
Therefore, the company generally wants the crew bags out fairly quickly so the crew aren't then standing around. On an overnight with minimum rest, any time spent wasted waiting for the bags can easily mean a delay to the first flight of the next morning. Our minimum rest is predicated on "time available to sleep" not just time off the aircraft.
For this reason, crew bags are either loaded last in a separate container, or may in fact be in the bulk cargo hold.