[Spoiler alert: the outcome is not at all rant-worthy, but it may help someone].
Longer term inmates of this forum will be aware that I am a dedicated, possibly fanatical, Hand Baggage Only (HBO) traveller. I have done that for all flights - short haul, long haul, no matter how long the duration, all over the planet. In the last 3 decades the only time I've not done that was in the aftermath of 9/11, currently from IST/BEY/CAI etc due to the restrictions on electrical items, and a few helicopter and Gulfstream flights.
Today I decided to check in my bag for NCL to LHR, so that I could time its arrival on the baggage carousel, in order to answer a PM I had received. And also because I could see it being useful information to have to hand in any related queries. And yes, BA managed to lose my bag on a simple point to point flight. OK, "delay" my bag to be more accurate.
Now going through NCL security - on one of its busiest days - was a joy. I only had a mobile phone to put in the tray, the security agent saw I was travelling ultra light so put it straight into scan unit and I effectively jumped a line of once-a-year travellers. Through in seconds. Uneventful flight, other than I arrived at gate 4 for 16:42 on a flight due into T5 at 17:00. Doors open at 16:45. I was back in row 10, the exit row on an A319, I wasn't in a big hurry to get to the baggage reclaim, but got to carousel 2 for 16:50. And waited. And waited.
On the next carousel, carousel 1, I noticed a few bags which had obviously ended up on the wrong place. So if you are that Loganair passenger baggage-less in Geneva tonight, after a trip via GLA and LHR, I can tell you your bag is probably still whizzing around domestic carousel 1. Any way there was a few announcements apologising for delays, and one specific for Seychelles customers, about an hour after their arrival, who had presumably started to complain. The reason given was "congestion in the baggage reclaim area".
The first NCL bags came out at 17:08, so the direct answer to my question would be "20 to 25 minutes", if we accept BA were having a bad day. There weren't many people waiting for bags from NCL, 20 maybe, the rest presumably either on connections or HBO. Very sensible.
By 17:20 domestic baggage reclaim was nearly deserted, and as the tumbleweed ran across the carousels, it finally dawned on me that my bag was not just the last out - it wasn't there at all. So I sauntered over - for the first time in my life - to Baggage Assistance. Lovely lady there tapped away and offered biscuits. Did you know Baggage Assistance has biscuits? Well I didn't.
Now there was some passengers from Belfast ahead of me in the queue, it turned out their bags had gone to the Store for some reason; and though the agent could retrieve them from the Store, that would then mean they would emerge in International Baggage Reclaim, so they were sent to the other end of the building and given instructions to use a telephone at the other end of Arrivals. Maybe that is what happened to my bags?
When the agent took my tag she tapped it into the computer and then looked surprised at the screen, then at the empty carousel in front of her. She picked up the telephone and talked to someone in the baggage unit. From what I could make out, my bag wasn't on the Heathrow system at all and all NCL bags had been processed. I asked if it left NCL correctly? Yes, apparently it had. Her best guess was that the bag had been incorrectly put in the Transfer baggage unit, and had gone off to another service. She offered to take my address so that my bag could be delivered "as soon as possible".
Now at this stage I realised that this was not going very well - London maybe a 24 hour city, but even I was struggling to think where to get a suit, shirt, tie, shoes for work tomorrow, given it would have been nearly 19:00 hrs by the time I got to Oxford Street. Plus I'm staying in 4 separate hotels this week. Was my week going to be spend monitoring Worldtracer and not ringing up 4 times a day?
Thinking rationally, I thought, OK this is going to get to BA666 to TOM via ABV, given my current lucky streak, but probably someone would actually notice the lack of tags for this, not load the bag and thus return it to Store. So I said "OK, I'll wait 30 minutes and see if we get more information". More public announcements apologising for delays in baggage reclaim. I wandered off for a bit, but UK baggage reclaim isn't a particularly interesting place to inspect. It was now around 17:30.
17:45, the agent went out of the desk to find me, and asked me to describe my bag. We returned to her desk, where she and her colleague agreed that baggage handlers had found my bag, and yes, it had ended up in International Arrivals (whether the Transfer bit happened, I'm not sure). Rather than sending me over to the other end of Arrivals like the Belfast passengers, the agent's colleague agreed to go next door to sort it out for me. A few minutes later, my bag duly appeared on Carousel 2, at 17:50. So an hour after I arrived all was well, the bag was safe and sound.
So I won't be doing that again any time soon. But thank goodness I had a Priority Tag put on it at NCL! Must have made all the difference.
