Originally Posted by
Tchiowa
Several people mentioned that US airports don't necessarily honor the priority luggage tags. In fact, none of them do. But they do unload the baggage bins according to how they are loaded in the plane. So if the departure airport loads the bins properly, the priority luggage comes out first.
What UA told me is that they have an enormous problem with bags getting loaded randomly into the flight bins rather than following the priority. Again, the old flight was UA and all the same flight number so I never had a problem.
That is what the airlines like to say, it was loaded wrongly. But it is interesting that airlines that can never make it work at their home base has it perfectly working when ANA handles them in Tokyo. (not looking at UA here) The diligence of the staff off loading, seems to have a massive influence, even more so than the packing. But it is easier to blame the ones who packed, it is somebody else's problem.