windowontheAside

I'm in the lucky camp. I check bags about half the time and rarely have to wait more than a few minutes by the time I get to the reclaim area.

Mind you, the customary cluster at the e-gates may have something to do with that.

Final 3 Greens

I regularly fly from Malta to LGW N on easyJet.

The baggage delivery is usually pretty good, taking perhaps 5-10 mins on average after arriving at the carousel.

That does include walking across the big bridge and then using the eGates (which seem to have speeded up in the latest iteration.)

Slow baggage delivery would put me off booking with BA, when they re-start the Malta run, in March.

tooblue

When IRIS was operating, entry to the UK at LGW was about 20 minutes quicker than it has become since IRIS withdrawal. That 20 minutes delay in reaching Baggage Reclaim doesn't seem to have translated into a shorter wait at the carousel.

FrancisA

When exactly was this?

I travel through LGW on average once a month with checked luggage and I cannot recall ever seeing the stats showing easyJet being quicker than BA.

That said, the BA performance at LGW is far from stellar. As others have said, getting luggage from an JER flight can take longer than the time in the air.

I am not sure where the criticism of LHR T5 comes from: I find delivery times there very quick and have often found the bags going round before I have reached the carousel (and as an F or J passenger I am normally first off).

I do think BA need to improve the LGW baggage performance. It would also be good if BA actually offered priority luggage (and made sure it actually worked) for short haul flights.

If there were guaranteed fast and efficient baggage handling, many more would do as I do and consistently check in luggage. [I do it because the liquids rule give me no choice and I really don't want to restricted to a properly sized carry one bag plus a laptop case.] The present nightmare with full overheads would then disappear.

Final 3 Greens

See the link in post #8

FrancisA

Not sure what point you are making. If you open each of the performance tables in that link, you will find that BA outperforms easyJet by quite some margin. Given that the BA figures include long haul and its added complications, that does tell you something about the efficiency of the two operations.

Don't get me wrong, I do not think the BA performance is good or good enough; but that seems to be an LGW problem. U2 are worse according to the statistics.

Final 3 Greens

Francis

I don't want to get into an argument, as I was only trying to be helpful, in case you had missed the earlier post, but if you open the last set of results (Sep 2013), you will find that BA delivered the 1st bag to the carousel within 20 mins of arriving on stand for 32.3% of flights and easyJet (UK) did the same 54.7% of times. BA managed to get the last bag on the carousel within 55 minutes for 94.4% pf all flights and easyJet for 98.4%.

It's interesting if you look at the South terminal, where easyJet achieve 67.6%/99.1% and Ryanair a fantastic 94.3/100%.

I noted your comment about the complexity of long haul and see that Virgin managed to get the 1st bag off within 20 mins for 94.7% of flights.

Edited to add, I've had a look at all the months and BA slightly outperformed easyJet in Jan and Feb.

What becomes clear, though, is the relative marked decline in BA's performance, compared to easyJet's, over the months. I wonder why that is the case?

FrancisA

Not sure how you are getting your figures. Adding up monthly performance for the 20 months quoted and dividing by 20? If I did the calculation, I would have to add in and weight by respective number of flights per month to get an accurate average.

Ryanair's figure may look less spectacular if you consider how few (and I mean very few) Ryanair have ex-LGW. Poor performance on just a couple of flights would seriously altered that figure.

I still think (rather than fall into the statistics trap) the BA performance is just not good enough. At the weekend it is very poor (and LGW is seen as a leisure destination) and the lack of any preferential treatment for CE passengers makes a joke of the premium leisure focus.

The statistics do suggest a decline in the last year, but my experience is that it is no worse - however, that is in the sense that is it as bad as it has ever been. Conversely I would say LHR (both T3 and T5) is much better than it used to be.

MPH1980

I think all he's doing is reading the figures right out of the tables provided by LGW themselves!

You can't strictly compare apples and apples - EZY don't have longhaul - but do have more flights than BA. Virgin/Monarch/Emirates have the longhaul but have far less flights.

So the best thing to do is compare BA and EZY due to the flight quantity. If you just look at the 'are they hitting the 55 minute target for all bags off the plane' - you can see that BA is performing worse than EZY (and below LGW's target of 95.5%). Not only in percentage terms - but also in shear number of flights missing the target (102 in September v 46). EZY dealing with almost 1000 more flights in the month. Even if we accept that these additional 'slow' flights are all longhaul - that's still not good at all.

M.

Passmethesickbag

Now that, by introducing the hand baggage only fare, BA has effectively put a price tag on the value of checked bags, surely it stands to reason that they should refund this difference if they cannot deliver the bags within a reasonable time frame?

gav0106

Just landed from Amsterdam. Expected long wait for bags from previous experience. It was a total of 10minutes from stepping off plane through passport with my russian wife to walking out of arrivals with my bag, fastest airport arrival ever! Hope they keep it up!

T8191

Has been cr@p at LGW since I can't remember when. Haven't timed it lately, as my stopwatch only does 30 minutes. Seriously dismal service delivery, especially ex-JER as others have noted.

Howard Long

Luckily I convinced the missus to bring carry on only today

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28508587

MSN095

I came through on Tuesday night with BA and we were warned that there may be delays due to staff shortages. The baggage hall was packed. Fortunately, I was HBO.

Cap'n Benj

Indeed, even when you whiz through immigration the wait for bags at t5 is minimal, I've done plane door at a b gate to curbside in 25 or so mins a number if time

Today I had to wait circa 20 mins for our buggy to be delivered to the gate which was not got. Luggage was obviously waiting on the carousel by the time we got there