Originally Posted by drvannostren

I might be able to shed a little bit of light on this, as someone who worked under WS/AC and is now an AC FF.

AC follows the "doors closed at T-15" or at least they try to. I know I ran onto a plane one day as last call and door close was about to happen, then when I sat down realized I still had 10 minutes to pushback. WS doesn't really do this, they do in a way but they try to be really friendly about it.

WS will also let people check in, WITH bags, mere minutes before pushback. At YVR we constantly had people late check-in. Late is defined as anything less than 45 minutes prior of course. AC flat out will not let me check a bag when this happens (though I can usually get the GC to just do it, so I'm not sure why they are such sticklers), but WS takes it too far. We'd be 20 minutes to pushback and have 5-6 more bags being sent down. WS always says "the passengers have been advised their bags might not make it". Basically we found a few too often those bags would miss then WS would b**ch at us about why they didn't make it. So we kinda just told them eventually, you send them down at your own risk.

Now the REAL insider stuff...this info is a bit outdated I will admit, and I know AC is improving in this area but here goes...

At WS we did SOOOO many bag pulls, T-15 minutes prior to pushback we'd still be loading and the gate agent would come down with 10 bag numbers to pull. Some are easy, if you know 7 are late check you should find them quickly, some are connections which can be found quickly as well. But what happens is, they'd call us for those bag pulls, meanwhile they've called the pax 5 times, then the 6th time the guy shows up. But that's because the calls start WAY too early. WS is VERY cognizant of their OTP, not to say AC isn't but AC was always much less concerned about a couple minutes late, whereas WS would ask us to account for every minute of a 4 minute delay, down to "there was an aircraft taxiing behind us"...that's how ridiculous it got.

When I was at AC, in 3 months, I did 1 bag pull. AC would constantly send bags without the passenger, which is against policy and transport law. They'd risk the fine, not sure if they just didn't care, or they just thought no-shows with bags didn't happen that often but we almost never did bag pulls. As a standby, I was bumped off a flight, asked if I had a bag and what color tag it was, I told them it was yellow and she said "oh well if it's yellow they sent it, if it was white they'll hold it", it has to do with rev or non-rev I think, but in any case I travelled on a different flight than my bag, for no reason. I also know, AC has far more standbys and of course oversells which throws things off a bit.

We actually had fun after a while at WS though, because if we could pull the bag before the agent would cancel it, we'd send the bag to arrivals, often times only to be told 3 minutes later to cancel. We were testing ourselves but also doing it somewhat out of spite because the passengers were making our lives miserable by not being at the gate on time.

Unless you've done it, you have no idea how miserable it is to stack 120 bags in a 737-800, getting rained/snowed on, only to have to undo all that work pull one of the damn first bags loaded, ONLY to then be asked to reload the probably overweight bag because the jerk showed up with 5 minutes left after sitting at the bar the whole time.

I can also tell you this, just anecdotally, more WS passengers show up in pajamas than AC.

Also, WS has more overweight bags. I left before they started charging for bags, but I'd say average checked bags per person was over 1. Also as WS would often be friendly and "overlook" baggage fees, people would constantly have 60lbs baggage and not be paying despite the 50lbs limit. Personally I don't have the numbers, but I would bet they left a lot of money on the table. Even if the person just transfers 10lbs of weight into their underweight bag, as dumb as that feels/sounds at least it conditions them to know they shouldn't be over 50.

Sorry, I always get ranty when talking about WS. Didn't hate working under them at all, but like anything you really see the ins and outs when you're there.