HAHAA I saw this thread and was like "oh I should respond"...then I see you people remember me from answering previous questions such as this. I'm flattered!

I've explained the process before, but I'm happy to do it again, handlers get such a bad rap, some of it is warranted, some isn't but it does get to me when people openly just rag on them without knowing the details (not that anyone has done it on THIS thread).

Here's the long and short of it, it depends on multiple factors. How it was loaded, how it's unloaded, manpower, weather (believe it or not), aircraft, airport facilities and then of course the actual guys doing the job.

1. Plane must be loaded properly. The bags you want OUT first must go IN last. A319 and any other bulk load aircrafts make this a bit of a problem. When the bagroom delivers the bags, you've essentially gotta just hold back all those priority bags which sometimes then puts you in a time crunch because you're standing around NOT working waiting for the regular bags to show up.

2. It's gotta be offloaded properly. Weight and balance play into this. I forget how AC loads the Airbus, but when I was there on Embraers the priority bags usually go up front. The back is often empty or close to it, reason being, if the back is heavily weighted, you'd need to offload that first before getting to the front. Not a huge deal, but it's slower. Now, let's say the priority bags DID in fact get loaded properly (last) and unloaded properly (first)...off to the carousel.

3. If there's manpower. Often times the crew will be tight on time, or short a guy, or REALLY far from the carousels (some airports are BRUUUUTAL for this). Now assuming the crew is solid and the equipment permits (gotta have enough gear to drive the bags around) then the guy takes em to the carousel, dumps them, hopefully it doesn't jam and he's back to the plane.

That's the 1-2-3 IDEAL scenario. There's so much room for hiccups there, especially when it comes to multi-airline bookings. The other thing is, priority only ever matters at the destination. YYJ-YVR-YYZ, the guys in YYJ couldn't care less about the priority tag...at YVR they must separate that bag from the herd to put it with the locally checked in priority tags. Still following me? Essentially it means the ramp guys can't be lazy. Don't forget there are LOTS of priority bags now, more than ever it seems.

On to a widebody aircraft and it's largely the same process, only with cans. Most airlines will load a can dedicated to priority bags. If I'm not mistaken British Airways has not just a priority can, but also a FIRST can.

So again, YVR-LHR you should get pretty decent priority handling. Either your bag will end up in the priority can or it'll get loaded in the bulk with gate checks and some light cargo. This could work out well for you, or it could totally screw you, depends on what else is in there. If there's no gate check items, I'm not climbing in that bulk before we offload the cans, because there's no reason for it. ESPECIALLY if the guys at the other end don't mention the 10 priority bags they've loaded in there due to time constraints.

The weather, anything out of the comfort zone slows you down, too hot, too cold, snow buildup, too much rain whatever. It's either gonna put me in a mood to not work as hard, or not be as diligent, or in the case of snow, it makes the equipment harder to move which means the odds of me running the bags twice are slim, the priorities still should come out first, but they might be IMMEDIATELY followed by the rest. It sucks, but weather plays a big factor, I'd be willing to bet we "lost" more bags on rainy/snowy days than on regular days because everyone is just in a funk.

LASTLY...it's about care. Sounds cheesy but it's true.

When I was on the ground at YVR there was nothing more frustrating than seeing a CO flight come in from IAH because sure 25 priority bags would be nicely loaded up front, but then another 25-30 would be s**t mixed in the back among the other 100 bags and 10 bikes/skis/snowboards or whatever. So sure enough the pax rip the agents, then they rip us, and MY only recourse is to write "TEXANS SUCK" on the inside of the plane and hope that they get the message. We would complain about the loads all the time and still, every day that offload sheet would come back "bin 1: priority bin 2: connections bin 3: locals (maybe some priorities)".

Oh also...hot connections will almost always take precedence over priority bags. IE: If I have 10 bags and 10 minutes to get to the NRT flight, those are going first then I'll get to the priority tags.

My brain is a bit all over the place here, but hopefully that makes sense haha.

PS: I actually really enjoy answering this kinda thing and educating where I can, feel free to PM me especially if there's a specific question or post a thread and hopefully I'll see it . You work at YVR for 6 years you learn a thing or two haha.