Priority Luggage never offered?
 

Morning All

Not a big deal but on last 4 flights:

LHR-EDI - First Check In
LHR-WAW - First Check In
WAW-LHR
ABZ-LHR

No priority tags given, wife and I both Gold's.

In Warsaw agent said only give when ask and only if you finish in London, if transit they only out transit tags.

In LHR T3, the agent did not out tags, and then completely ignored me as he explained to my wife where the First lounge was, I must not have looked the right type for the First Lounge :D

Just wondered if there any reason for lack of tags?

I don't believe priority baggage is offered on short haul.

They have no effect, they are just for show so I wouldn't get too upset. There is supposedly a priority code on the barcode on the baggage tag but I've yet to see it pull any results. There is a trail ongoing at LHR for a few select LH flights with passengers in the First cabin but that's it.

Maybe BA have decided to be environmentally friendly and save on the paper, given that they don't actually offer a priority luggage service (except on a handful of trial flights if you're travelling in F). Given most other airlines seem to manage it fine, I still can't understand why BA find it quite so difficult.

You may very well get tags, but these tags do nothing to speed up the delivery of the bags since there is no priority service offered. It is possible that they have a placebo effect, however.

Indeed. Tags or no tags, BA explicitly does not offer priority baggage handling (apart from the recently started first bags from 4 routes in to LHR).

https://www.oneworld.com/ffp/oneworld-benefits

Oh yes I'm fully aware of their usefulness! 😀

In fact I wonder if they sometimes ensure my bags come out at the rear or am I judging others by my own wicked thoughts!

I really can't see how it makes any difference on shorthaul trips going via LHR. Baggage handling in LHR has a high level of automation and no computer is looking at Priority tags, it's just checking the routing barcode and pushing them down the right chute. T3 is a bit more manual compared to T5, but even so the usual cliché can be deployed: priority tags are only employed for the purposes of keeping happy those who ask for priority tags, they are entirely meretricious. At ABZ and WAW the bins come off aircraft and get dumped on to the reclaim belts, everything is mixed together (some flights only have 1 AKE bin).

Be careful what you wish for! Flying CPT-JNB in J recently, the check-in agent very carefully and slowly removed the extant "Club" labels from my luggage (attached on the JNB-CPT sector the previous day), only to replace them with, er, identical-but-newer "Club" labels.

I just learnt a new word!!

Expedited baggage on Comair operated flights?
 

Does anyone happen to know if the Club/Priority tags on Comair-operated BA flights actually get the bags expedited? They appear to come out ahead of the rest (in DUR/CPT/JNB anyway). Mind you, I find the whole BA/Comair Club experience significantly better than BA CE in most instances.

There were four passengers on a recent WDH-JNB service, including myself and a friend. Our four bags were the first onto the carousel. YMMV and this is one data point, but it appears Comair do prioritize baggage.

With respect to LHR T5, do baggage handlers have no role at all? I get that once bags are put into the system, they'll get to the carousels when they get there, but surely feeding them into the system more quickly should result in them arriving at the baggage hall more quickly? I'm not sure why the level of automation would have anything to do with it... there's lots of airports with highly automated baggage systems that manage to process priority bags.