rossmacd

I have transferred through LCY on BACF 3 times in the last 8 months, on the following itineraries, and EACH time my baggage has not followed me. Is this just down to horrendous luck on my part, or is there a more systemic problem in the system?

ZRH-LCY-EDI - May 2015 - I misconnected (could not get on next EDI service, but the one after due to no available seats, then what made it worse my bag was delayed overnight
ZRH-LCY-GLA - December 2015 - both bags checked did not arrive and were sent the following morning
GLA-LCY-ZRH - January 2015 - 1 out of 3 bags delayed overnight (this was the bag that I had to pay excess baggage charges for, which makes it more infuriating )

I would appreciate if anyone else has had such woeful experience recently with LCY?

This is not a post seeking compensation (I hate that word) in any form, but would like to see if I should just avoid the 30 or 60min connections offered at LCY as baggage will never make it. I have no real reason to complain - the bags have always been sent on the following (or as close to) service and delivered promptly. (Much can be said for THS, especially at MAN )

I am sure some smart cookie will say why book 30min connections through LCY, but it is a MCT offered and I will always book as close to MCT as possible to reduce my time in airports! And I am sure the HBO crowd will say why not travel HBO, but the nature of my work requires me to transport liquid samples, always over 100ml, therefore until these inane 'security' rules are relaxed, I will be forced to check baggage.

I have has other baggage woes in 2015, but not such as consistent theme as experienced at LCY.

corporate-wage-slave

In a sense it is probably what you have alluded to here. LCY does very little transfer traffic and whereas in other airports they carefully examine bags for their routing, what I think tends to happen is that everything gets dumped on the carousels as quickly as possible - which is what 99% of passengers there want. And LCY is fast at getting bags out. If your connection was a little longer then it would be more likely picked up from the carousels and then reloaded. It's notably that if flying CWLCY they ask at gate 24 if you have a checked bag and phone over to the hall if necessary.

If you have a bit more than 30 minutes before your next flight, particularly if it is not a Thursday or Friday evening, I would be tempted to wait until the carousel has had its load added, which won't take long, and then recheck if necessary if your stuff comes out. If it's labelled you can in theory hand it to the LCY staff by the carousels, if not go to the check in desks which you almost have to walk past anyway. It won't exactly eat into your lounge time.

Ldnn1

My first thought was 'surely there's a direct flight you can take on U2 or someone'. Alas not! Oh the woes of living in the regions... you do have my sympathies

HIDDY

BD used to serve ZRH from EDI. The service was mostly used by bankers who as it turned out were about as good at looking after money as the BD bean counters were.

FlyerTalker6245

I think that's primarily because they need to get a barcode from your luggage tag onto your boarding pass for scanning purposes at Shannon.

Kgmm77

Spoken like someone who by admission never checks a bag!

2/3 to 3/4 of the time it's within 10 mins, but if a few flights land at the same time (particularly during ski or summer holiday season) it is utter, utter chaos and can be c30 mins + as there aren't enough handlers or space on the belts, so the bags remain on the inbound aircraft for a long time.

rossmacd

Whilst I completely agree LCY is not an airport set up to handle transfers, I see enough people actually transferring (on the same itineraries as me) to know that it is probably more common than some think.

I can't believe that 'everything' is dumped on carousels, then transfer bags picked off to be sent on their way - this is a sure fire way of baggage not making tight-ish connections! Surely is it pre-sorted prior to reaching the belts?

Agree that this is an option, but a passenger really shouldn't have to do this if their baggage is checked all the way through to destination Just shows how incompetent the whole (transfer) system actually is!

rossmacd

Unfortunately not. It is always direct flight where at all possible, irrespective of an indirect on a preferred airline, airport or whatever. I would happily take U2 if they served a bigger slice of the ZRH market. Heading to BSL when ZRH is literally 15mins from home is not appealing (as good as Swiss public transport is!).

And FWIW, I live in ZRH, not exactly a 'region'

rossmacd

Agreed. I use LCY often, especially when terminating in LON also. Sometimes baggage at LCY is as bad as what LGW used to be!

MHendo84

This is what happened when we did BA1, bags were tagged through but got given a new BP at the gate with a barcode on for the bag which was then used for identification at Shannon.

rossmacd

Quick update - maybe my original assumptions about the baggage were unfounded. I've just had an update on my latest episode where it seems that my baggage has been routed GLA-LHR-ZRH, therefore I am assuming that my bag did not actually get loaded in GLA for GLA-LCY-ZRH!

So it seems this time that LCY is not actually at fault Still not a great record of course....

Roll-on 2016 and hopefully a more successful year of baggage performance when travelling BA ^

tuff

Do you know something we don't?

corporate-wage-slave

Unfortunately I don't think so!

DELLAS

Did they ever fix the bar code reader issues at LCY on transit bags? According to a check in agent they had issues with transit bags where the bar codes on the labels were removed ( small ones ) and placed randomly on the actual bag/case. It seemed at the time that LCY needed these to not be removed otherwise there can be issues with their systems reading it.

DocWatson

Tonight was a shambles really, domestic reclaim snarled up and rather busy - in the space of 10 minutes 2 FlyBe arrivals from EDI/ABZ, BA from GLA and IOM, and my bag was out first after 20 minutes. Regular PA announcements blaming a high number of arrivals - and there was me thinking scheduled flights (all of which were near enough on time) wouldn't be any great surprise to somewhere like an airport.