Agent69

I may just be unlucky, but on he last few flights my bags have taken an eternity to appear on the carousel.

I always assumed that if you check in first then your bags are at the front to be loaded on the plane and consequently last off. However checking in late doesn't appear to improve things. I appreciate that having a CE priority tag doesn't cut much ice with anyone, but does anyone have any tips on how you can improve the odds of your case appearing sooner than average?

Alternatively, is it all just complete pot luck?

corporate-wage-slave

Depedning on location this may be more to do with a shortage of baggage handlers. But the luggage goes into a series of bins, and the first bag to be checked in is indeed invariably at the bottom of the bin. On longhaul there is a dedicated First / CW / fast transfer bin, but sometimes that isn't the first to be offloaded at arrival, though it is supposed to be. But generally checking in late will give you more of a chance to be on the carousel first, but there are so many things that can get in the way of this that you are not a long way off it being random.

ISTFlyer

I also had flights with multiple airlines, where in the case no priority tags were respected, that O<->D passengers bags are unloaded first with transfer baggages bags unloaded from the aircraft and delivered last. Although, I haven't seen this happen a lot with BA, this is usually the case when flying QR when the specific outstation has issues with staffing.

Confus

From Heathrow (and any other airport with an EBS) the first bags to be checked in are likely to sit in storage for a while, and will likely be released somewhere in the middle of loading.

BA loads bags in priority bins based on ticketed cabin not FF status, so economy pax should be unloaded last.

The best way to ensure your bag is first off is to check it in at the last minute, i.e. after the laterals gave closed, as this will mean it�s sent direct to head of stand to be thrown on at the end. But of course checking in this late may give rise to a sub-optimal airport experience elsewhere.

Sometimes though it�s just luck of the draw. Whatever policies they may or may not have go out the window if a reshuffle is required for weight and balance reasons. This particularly affects the shorthaul neo fleet.

scottishpoet

if there is more than 1 bin, your bag loaded last into bin two could be on the belt after the bags at the bottom of bin 1, depending how they decide to empty the bins.

Then you are into the relms of do they mix hard and soft cases etc when loading the bins.

It is pretty much a lottery. Occassionally the tags appear to work because, by the law of averages, your bag will sometimes appear early.

mtofell

^^This

I can't even count the number of times I check in two bags together and they come out 10-15 minutes apart. I always wonder exactly how this happens. I'm not even so much bothered as it's just a few minutes in a long travel day. I just don't get it and am curious. Does someone kick one of my bags off the belt in back? Does one get stuck on the conveyer belt? Is a handler at the arrival screwing with me? Is one of my bags lost and then found at the last minute? I honestly have a picture in my mind of a mixing bowl the size of a grain silo that all the bags get thrown into and then set onto the belt.

13901

If you look at an airport like LHR, with a modern Baggage Handling System and Baggage Reconciliation System, what happens is that - if you check in 2h before your flight - your bags end up in the Early Bag Store. Think of it like the warehouse at the end of IKEA, the one where you have very tall 'bookshelves' where all the flat-pack furniture is. There's two EBSs underneath T5 and more in the big box that towers above Terminal 3, the T3 IB system. Your bag, after check-in, goes on a plastic tray running on tracks. It gets scanned, and then the tray leads it to the EBS. Each bag has one tray, and though you might have two bags, these can be placed at either end of the EBS.

At a certain point in time your flight "opens". This means that, on the ground floor of Terminal 5, a "lateral" opens up for your flight. Think of it as a big conveyor belt with a bit of road next to it, where the tug with its bins cargo will pull up. The Baggage operators will start 'calling' in the bags, but not all at the same time. They build bins back-to-front in the plane, so that the least time-critical bags will be further "in" the belly of the plane. So they'll start with bog-standard economy bags and will end up with either priority bags or transfers. This is done by calling, from the EBS, bags by their attribute. So an operator will enter a keystroke in the system that will release all short-connecting bags, and all those bags that have connecting time of less than 90 mins will be ejected from the EBS and will descend.

In this situation, it's pretty clear that your two bags might end up in different bins, even though they have the same category. On a busy widebody you can have 5-6 bins full of economy bags or even 2-3 transfer bins. I've seen flights to Accra leaving with 800 bags.

On the other hand, if you're flying from a place with more 'rustic' infrastructure, like the US, there is still a chance that your bags will end up in different bins. They will come down the chute together, but if the operators aren't building the correct bin at the moment (say your bags are London terminating Y bags, and the operators are building Premium and short connections) they will be lined on the side of the conveyor belt and then will be fed into the bins at the appropriate time.

Another thing to remember is that baggage loading is very manual, and that operators tend to maximise space inside a bin. So your two bags might arrive at exactly the same time on the conveyor belt, but it's highly likely that the operators will not put them side by side in the same bin. It's a bit like Tetris.

kyleclogan

As my American fellow, Richard Kerr, would advise: start the timer the second you reach the gate and doors open. If your bags are not on the carousel within 20 minutes, most American carriers will compensate you with points, typically no questions asked. Not sure if this applies to BA, but given the more restrictive regulations in the UK, figured I would toss the thought out there.

corporate-wage-slave

Zero chance of that on BA. Or on most airlines I can think of in Europe. KLM at AMS have similar difficulties to BA at LHR incidentally.

13901

The Heathrow guidance/KPI (from HAL, so not the airline) is way beyond those 20 minutes. Besides, if you're on an A380 arriving in T5C it'll take you more than 20 minutes to walk to arrivals and past immigration.

Confus

I actually don�t think it would be physically possible to eject 400 bags from the middle of a 77W on stand C56 and get them to the baggage belt in 20 mins. That�s F1-style logistics.