AC 566 YVR-SFO.

The bright orange tag somehow fell off my bag, but it was still one of the first few out.

I genuinely don�t know why they still bother with those tags. We know the priority-ness of the bags is coded into the baggage tag, so you�d have to think the priority tag is just there to let the bag owner feel special.

Yeah. This one doesn't look like a clean cut, which I've also seen before.

Not all airports have modern baggage handling systems, especially the smaller ones.

Even in larger airports, bags don�t go through the automated baggage handling system in some special circumstances, such as equipment swap, where bags are directly brought from one aircraft to another.

AC YYZ-CDG direct in J

Bag 1 was the very first bag out.. dream start. Second bag came out dead last - thought for sure it was lost after ~25 minutes.

My general experience - and it's a bit of a "duh..." comment - is that when flight is not full and/or its not crazy busy at both departing and arriving airport the Priority Handling thing works well. When its busy it's a poop-show with no rhyme or reason

I will also add that I would rather wait 20 minute even if my bag is the last one out, rather than my bag being the first one out but I have to wait for an hour. Though if I have to wait for an hour, chances are my bag is more likely (but still unlikely) to be the last one out too.

YYZ - YUL - YHZ(A220) - my bag came out quickly, 3 minutes after the first bag came out
YHZ - YVR(737) my back came out very quickly, within first 10 bags
YVR - YYZ(787) - my bag came out first

So I think it works at least for domestic travel

MUC-YYZ J, 2 checked bags out within the first 10 bags loaded onto carousel. Touched down at 2pm and was out of the airport with luggage by 2:35pm. Pretty impressive for YYZ.

I suspect whether priority bags are indeed priority does not depend so much upon the destination but really, on the departure airport. And I would bet MUC is efficient in that respect.

It depends on lots of factors. Containers could have been loaded and unloaded in the right order, but if no one was unloading bags from containers to the baggage belt, then all containers would pile up and I doubt anyone would bother to check and unload them in the right order.

It�s also possible that bags are loaded into both front and rear cargo hold for some reason, and priority may or may not get considered during unloading.

I flew today to the US out of YYZ. I rarely check bags but I today I went to the self check-in to print my luggage tag. I then asked an employee where I can get my orange tag before I drop the bag in automated baggage handling machine.

She told me that they stopped putting these tags on. I sense some BS because if AC doesn�t use these tags anymore, other star alliance partner may still rely on them.

Your actual tags will indicate PRIO. You don�t need the orange tag.

That being said, they absolutely still put them on.

On a recent flight I watched them unload bags from a plane from a window in the lounge. They pulled bags out and clearly intentionally put them on different carts on the train, different trains, and even pulled a few bags out and set them aside entirely. There were at least three or four categories of bags, maybe more. One of those were presumably priority bags for local arrivals, the others were presumably US connections, international connections, domestic connections, and perhaps short or long connections. In short... it's definitely not as simple as just "handle these bags first and those after".

Once the train arrives at the luggage unloading presumably the priority bags are first but if the first train was full and drove off and the next train pulled in and they found more priority bags loaded deeper in the hold... Or even if the first car they set aside for priority bags was full and they stacked a few on a later car -- would you prefer they took the time to move the other bags around to ensure it was first or just put it where there was room and deliver it as fast as they could?

The airlines that reliably deliver priority bags first? The way they do it is by unloading all the bags without putting them on the carousel until they have all the priority bags pulled out and then delivering them in priority order. That may make you feel better about being first but you're not actually getting the bags faster than if they had just started delivering them asap.

Fwiw I've been *G and I've been *nobody and I definitely felt I was walking out as one of the first few people while lots of people were waiting by the carousel more often as *G. And that's as a Nexus holder so I was often walking away from the carousel while others were only just arriving at all. It was far from 100% of the time (and definitely didn't work on my last flight) but it was noticeably more often than as a *nobody.