Originally Posted by
DMPHL
IYE, are the delays mostly to arriving bags as opposed to departing bags? I have a flight on BA F JFK-LHR next week, and then a couple days later flying out of T3 on RJ to Amman. I'd like to check a bag, but am very worried about the possibility that the arrival from BA into T5 and/or the departure from T3 on RJ are in the midst of enough chaos that my bag will be severely delayed.
The least likely bags to be disrupted are those doing a straightforward JFK-LHR, checked in a couple of hours before departure, flight and airport not facing extra pressure, bags recovered in LHR. The usual worst case scenario is having to wait a bit longer than usual to collect bags. It's connecting flights that cause the greatest problems overall, by a big factor, plus in the LHR context, when the complex baggage systems have an outage, which happens from time to time. Usually delayed bags take about 3 to 5 days, however there examples of it taking much longer upthread. However threads like this have a danger if they give an overall impression - actually it's a string of anecdotes, where anyone who simply had no problem won't be reporting this here. These anecdotes have value, in terms of illustrating difficulties, but the one thing you can't read into this is a likely outcome for your bags.
Currently the main problem is arriving bags rather than departing bags, but still 98% of bags, I estimate, are being delivered to the carousel.