13901

Unless you have access to the LHR Tracking system, I'm afraid you don't. But seeing how the bag hasn't moved yet, and seeing that it hasn't flown on yesterday's service, I'm afraid it wasn't 'in system'.

Sorry to hear that. If I were to hazard a guess, your bag might've failed security, had to be manually inspected and now is stuck in a queue. T3IB handles all the T3 bags and I bet it's 'busy' over there.

Won't help, I'm afraid.


As Sigwx correctly pointed, when your bag is 'reflighted' either a new tag is printed or, on the old one, the agent places a so-called overlay tag. That tag will be adorned with the word "RUSH" in capital letters, meaning that it's (normally) taking priority over any other bag on a specific flight. The procedure diverges slightly when the bags are offloaded upon landing (depends on the airport) but what happens is that these RUSH bags wind up in a specific area of the arrival hall, where the agents take care of the next steps (updating the bag file, couriering etc). This June I was in T5 and my bag was being delivered at Belt 11 if I remember correctly. By that area there was a big pile of RUSH bags that a BA agent and an AA agent were working through. Seemed like AA had a bad day out of CLT and MIA judging by the tags.

Well done!!!I really invite people to get rid of old barcodes.

Multi-reads ARE a nuisance and, up until 2018, one of the main reason for in-system failures at LHR. It works like this: Mr Sigwx is operating the BA123 to Timbuctu. Checks in a bag with tag no. BA123456. However he's forgotten an old barcode stub, this time for bag tag AA654321. The system, at some point, reads that old barcode... and oh-oh, the system saw tag AA654321 before! Two days ago*, to be precise, in T3, going to Charlotte. Could it be? Could it not? Well, in either case better get a human on it. So the bag goes to the "Problem Bag Area" where, obviously, it's mayhem and it misses the flight.

After 2018 a logic on multi-read was implemented, where the system does an extra round of checks and compares the previous readings for the bag tag. In the scenario above, the system will 'think': "Hmm, I've got six prior scans for this bag. It's always been BA123456, and then all of a sudden it's AA654321. I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume it's a multiread". Problem is, it doesn't always work.

*Bag tag number are recycled, normally every 5-7 days for BA, but AA cycles through its bag number allocation faster as they move a lot more bags.

thegamebird

UPDATE: Today the Wordltracer text came telling me my bag had been located at T3 and is on today’s BA289. This is great news. I’d suspected it had been found as the AirTag had a lot of activity yesterday evening and the bag was moving all over the place!

The second bag has started it’s long trip from the randomness of Lyon, via Montreal, Newark and then on to Phoenix. I hope Lost Bag 2 doesn’t get lost again and I have no clue why they would have picked such a circuitous route - this is somewhat beyond me, but suspect there’s a sensible reason lurking in there.

So this OP is resting slightly easier, and hoping for a smooth ride once the bags start their journey.

As others have said this thread has been a fascinating insight into the inner workings of our baggage and I hope it’s helped others as much as it’s helped me. Thank you.

13901

LYS bag (and my inner geek REALLY wants to still have system access to understand what happened to it) will have been reflighted on the shortest available route. Basically the system “works out” how to get a bag fastest and just gets it on its way.

A friend of mine’s skis didn’t make it on his MAD-LHR-DEN itinerary and were reflown MAD-MIA-IAH-DEN and got there pretty quick…

wrp96

It really depends on the airport. I once arrived in ACC without my bags. I was told I would have to come back to the airport the next day to pick them up. This involved meeting at the baggage office, then being taken outside, walking along a fenced area, climbing over a short wall, walking across a grassy area, then standing at a door with a guard who would occasionally tell one of the group of us that was waiting that we could enter. To where you didn't know at this point. Once I was finally let in, I went down a hallway past several offices, and then emerged out a door into the baggage claim area where my bags had just arrived on the carousel with that day's flight. I then got to clear them through customs (thankfully with minimal inspection) and head out of the airport like I had just arrived.

thegamebird

I ALSO wish you still had access so you could explain the routing! The LYS bag gets into PHX 6.5hrs later than BA289. Even I worked out that if they’d had the bag on the 6am-ish BA flight out of LYS into T3 this morning it would have made the BA289 and got into PHX early evening and only two flights.

13901

6AM... most probably the BA station is rather "thin" in terms of staff (like most outstations) and the baggage person does arrivals and reflighting, or some other activity as well, and as such there's no capability to handle reflighting on that very early flight.

Swanhunter

Back in the day when I was interested in TP I flew LHR-HEL-FRA-SIN

Unknown to me at the time my bag didn’t make the HEL connection but was reflighted on the direct AY flight and actually beat me to Singapore.

dougzz

I think in 2019 I flew AA DUB-DFW-LAS. There was an AA flight DFW-LAS around an hour before mine that I could have made, and my bag was loaded on this flight apparently. This earlier flight was then delayed several hours and I arrived in LAS on my flight, to be told, along with about 25 others, that our bags would be on the flight now delayed until around 1AM. Offered to wait, or have it delivered to hotel the next day. I asked them to keep it as I was heading out on a road trip and wanted to collect it myself the next day which they were happy with. I guess AA just route bags this way.

thegamebird

UPDATE: The Heathrow bag turned up on BA289 yesterday 48h late yesterday. Interestingly the bag was only tagged with the original tag from 4th July and there was no second tag.

Bag two that made its way here via a random and unplanned trip to Lyon came in on a domestic flights via Montreal and Newark and the AirTags once again came to the rescue and reassured me it had made all its connections. We picked the bag up at half past midnight last night from the domestic carousel at PHX.

AirTags have been invaluable in this whole baggage experience and they have certainly earned their keep these last few days.

Lucanesque

This is a brilliant thread, glad you got your bags thegamebird and thanks for the education 13901 and Sigwx - I'll be removing the many and varied bar codes from my cases now

msaps

Another very hearty endorsement of AirTag's - my lost luggage got delivered from LHR to BER the other day, although the BA tracker seemed to have no knowledge of this and the staff at BER also didn't seem to know where it was. Went to the airport who again said they didn't know where it was, showed them the Find My app which proved it was in BER and was allowed to have a look - low and behold it was sat in an unloved corner next to the luggage carousel.

God knows when it would have supposedly been couriered to my apartment.

ThatT1Feeling

Yes, I have learned loads from this thread and thank you 13901 for your fascinating insight.

Will be removing all of the small tags from my bags and also will be using my Airtags for my family holiday later this month. Hopefully they won't actually be needed if I use them!