dubbin

While this may be possible, I doubt it would be without cost or easy since it amounts to a major overhaul of BA's baggage handling procedures. That's a lot of time out for training, and a lot of oversight and QC.

DWFI

Yes. And they also save a lot of MY time waiting for bags.
It would be nice to think of the customers, wouldn't it?

AA priority baggage works 90% of the time, which is pretty good by my standard.

I have flown over 15 sectors in CX F and every single time my bag has been within the first 10 bags on the belt. Same with OZ, JL, SQ, TG, LH, EK F.

Contrast this to my experience with BA where priority baggage works about 33% of the time.

It's really unacceptable.

BA0197

Wow! BA actually has luggage procedures and here was I thinking that they always came out last by accident when travelling J or F.

I seriously doubt it would take much effort if they just trained their baggage handlers to make a manual intervention to ensure that they priority luggage came out first. If it is computerised and containerised, why don't they just fix which container they out in last to ensure that the priority one is the first to be unloaded.

I'm only used to 737 flights on AA so that is where my experience stays at. I'm sure it would take a considerably longer time to unload the baggage on a 747. So, I'm not sure of the amount of time that would take to sort out the bags.

It just seems like a relatively simple thing to fix that would make BA's most important customers happy.

Poxball

Exactly!

prof

Indeed, every other airline I've flown on manages this on a regular basis, day in, day out. I don't understand why BA seems to find it so baffling.

layz

With my flying history I always took the priority labels to be meaningless in general, but I've had some good experiences too.

When I used to fly KL regularly - up to 1999 (and occasionally the other European SkyTeam partners) priority baggage seemed to mean nothing. I had hand luggage only when flying NW/DL so can't comment on those. Positive experience: me and my partner were the only two in business class on a CityJet flight to ORY (when they still had business class), a member of AF ground crew had already seen our bags put them on a trolley. The other bags had only started coming out. That was a one off, as I didn't use that route often, so don't know if this was something they'd normally do.

When I flew bmi - Priority labels also seemed to do nothing. Most of my trips on Star Alliance partners were hand luggage only so can't say if Lufthansa is better in that regard, although when I was non-status LH did impress me by my luggage making it on a really tight connection.

I was surprised recently on BA in ATH when all the priority bags came out first.

T8191

Our bags have the tags. No idea how well they work, as the borders give them enough time to get them on the belt - except at bloody LGW. Or JER, come to that. 35 minute flight, 25+ minutes from chocks to bags at JER and 40 at LGW.

I regard them as vanity tags. If they did one for OAPs I would be interested, although that would probably mean the slowest handling … to allow me time to get to reclaim

FrancisA

I must sound like an old record on this one, but priority luggage is NOT a status benefit and nowhere on ba.com do BA say that it is.

I know that surprises some people, but most of the frequent flyer benefits are offered to make the experience on the ground equivalent to Club (for silver) and F (for gold). In the air if you want CE/CW or F service, then you need to pay for the corresponding cabin. Priority luggage falls into the "comes with the cabin" category.

Besides that, it doesn't actually work. The tags are never going to work as BA has no system to sort by tag. Containerised luggage and priority via the bar code (the system that BA claims to use) similarly does not work either. To be honest this is one area where BA is very very poor.

DeanB

Priority tags generally work pretty well I find.

Better on long-haul, in/out of T5, and more noticeable on busy flights.

I assume that if a flight is almost-empty, they're more likely to bung all the bags in a single container rather than spread them out.

Even better on AA and in/out of various Asian airports. But unfortunately they're usually wasted flying into the US because of the length of immigration queues - my bags usually get to the carousel long before I do.

offtothehills

Flew CX F - bags off first and actually waiting for us loaded on trolleys waiting for us, fantastic.
Our connecting flight yesterday BA LHR-ABZ flight was stuck on the stand at LHR - flippin' baggage compartment hatch/door delayed it by twenty mins. We got to ABZ, then had to wait for thirty minutes on stand as there had been a fire alarm in the terminal which caused chaos. We were depending on getting a train connection to INV. The latter problem is certainly not BA's fault though.

Finally, at the carousel in ABZ all of our SIX bags were the very last ones to come off.

Unacceptable?
We ARE accepting it, that's the crux of the matter is it not?

HilFly

On my most recent LHR - BOS, priority tagged bags came streaming onto the carousel at BOS first. Unfortunately, mine were not amongst them - they were still at LHR.

hillrider

It can be done. AA recently went through this (their program had gone sideways) and it's working 95% of the time now; it's definitely a differentiating point to the frequent high-value traveler. The difference between waiting 12 minutes or 45 minutes to someone who bills $1,000 an hour is over $500 in billable time.

ACARS

On long hauls into destinations that suffer long waits for baggage, you can identify when the First bin is being unloaded as all the crew suddenly find their bags arriving. When this happened for the third time to one African station, I asked the CSD who told me the crew bags and F class bags are always in the same bin. So to this day I follow them if I burn avios on an F upgrade! Then I should hopefully be reunited a little quicker, and know when to avoid the scrum.

Not sure if this is destination dependent or not.

DWFI

I know. And if they want to do it that way (directly against what every OW partner does) that's fine.

All I want is the bags that are actual priority - at least J/F if not status - to come first. For the system to actually work.

evanderm

Digging up this thread as I thought I'd share my most recent experience (yesterday). I've also written to BA about the issue I encountered.

I was booked in Club World on the long-haul sector of my journey (YYZ-LHR) and Euro Traveller for the short-haul (LHR-AMS), my bag was labelled 'Priority'.

My flight arrived at the gate at 15:29 (landed early at 15:13, thanks Polderbaan) and the first bags only appeared at 16:25. My bag was the 75th bag from our flight to arrive at 16:35. I noticed 4 orange priority tags and 1 yellow first tag at various times before my bag appeared. The display at AMS said "Bags expected 15:56" until about 10 minutes before the bags actually arrived when it updated to "Bags expected 16:25". When my bag came out the screen read 'All bags delivered' which leads me to believe that my bag was among the very last to arrive. needless to say I didn't stick around to find out.

There was another (Transavia) flight with bags to be delivered at the same belt as our flight. This flight landed after we had already arrived at the gate and its baggage was offloaded and fully delivered while we waited for the first of our bags to appear. In the case of our flight, we were in the air longer than the time it took for my bag to reach the belt once we were parked at the gate. Keep in mind that this was a 319 so the smallest of BA's short-haul fleet at LHR.

Not only is this a case of priority tags having absolutely no effect; it shows just how poorly the delivery of bags was for this particular flight. Sadly it's not the first time I've had an excessive wait for my bag at AMS and I've written to BA before about the poor handling by their handling agent Aviapartner. Not surprisingly, nothing's changed.