qlabdad

Mostly this is a rant but there is a question...
I hate checking bags and the reason is the airlines (any airline) can't reliably get it to the destination in a timely manner! I also like to leave the airport as soon as possible, especially after a long flight.
Had a long day last Friday flying ZAG-CDG-LHR-EWR. AF within Europe and CO to EWR. AF made me check my standard rollerboard in ZAG which never made it to LHR and missed my CDG connection. Had a 5hr layover in LHR and AF said the bag would arrive into LHR at 2pm and they would get the bag to CO for my 4pm (CO19) flight.

If my day went as scheduled I would have been traveling for 20+hrs and had a party to go to after I arrived in EWR so that last thing I wanted to do after arriving in EWR was to wait at a baggage carousel for a bag that wasn't on the plane! AF said to verify with CO that it made it. This is where the adventure began...

When I checked in they added something to my record that the bag was to be transferred to CO and said to check with the GA when boarding to see if it arrived. When the gate opened I asked the GA who said she had no way to know. After pressing a bit she wrote down my info and said she would let me know after boarding. Never happened. I was in row 7 on the 757 so there were plenty of CO employees in front of me while boarding. I asked everyone except for the flight attendants to please let me know if the bag was below. That is all I wanted to know. 2 more people promised to tell me and I never saw them again. It was like I was bothering them with the question. Terrible...

Of course when I arrived in EWR I had to wait, and wait, and wait and no bag. In accordance with Murphy's law the carousel broke and they had to reset it. I didn't really care that my bag wasn't there since I was home but having to wait for no reason really ticked me off, especially when I made every attempt to know in advance. My family was waiting for me to go to the party.

Now, what do I do? Did AF have my bag or did CO? Arriving in terminal C went to CO's baggage office. They were actually quite nice but it took more than 15 minutes to get the incident into CO's system since I had an AF claim # but CO really couldn't tell me when the bag would arrive. They had the AF flight it was coming on but didn't know which day.

It's now Sunday and nothing from CO.

Now to the question...Shouldn't CO have been able to tell me (before departure) that my bag made it on board the plane? They didn't loose it but it's a simple question and seems reasonable. I hope for security reasons they do know and this was a only customer service.

Thanks,

Q

Steph3n

I have found CO to be among the best in regards to checked bags, but when dealing with an interline, it adds a lot of complexity. Sounds like the AF side was responsible for this 'misconnect' of the baggage however.

DrMaturin

I don't know the answer to your question but this happened so many times to me that I now retrieve my bag at the intermediate airport and check it in again when I do interline travel.

DeaconFlyer

What's harder? Getting an interline transfer correct or knowing when to use lose vs. loose.

These forums sure are full of people who need to tighten their bags.

qlabdad

All I wanted to know was if it was on the plane and they couldn't tell me. That was real my frustration. Now it's just a joke...
CO did call me this morning proactively and asked if I heard from AF which I did not. Why couldn't CO have called AF and then called me with an update? On Friday CO told me they had point and would deal with AF and it was being transferred to CO. While on the phone the CO agent called AF in EWR to find Delta was their agent at EWR. Bag missed all flights yesterday and is supposedly on an AF flight from CDG to EWR today and should be delivered tonight. I think it apparently went back to CDG, probably because AF doesn't have flights to EWR from LHR.
They will have to pry the bag out of my hands next time.

Mackieman

Stuff happens, dude. It's the same idea behind hard drives: sometimes one will break, no matter what the brand or manufacturer. All airlines lose bags sometimes. It sucks when it happens to you, but be thankful that the occurrence is infrequent, lest people around you start to get the idea that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to the rest of us.

dmunz

Isn't there some kind of security requirement that they know the bag is on the plane with the passanger it belongs too? I can't imagine them letting a flight from LHR go with an unaccompanied bag.

Try connecting CDG-LHR-EWR with a checked bag and skip out in London. Would they let the bag fly?

I know it is not exactly the same thing, but they have to be abel to track the bags...

FWIW
DLM

Steph3n

It is a myth, carge flies without a passenger all the time.

njcommodore

I think if someone doesn't show up for a flight maybe they'll pull the bags off for security reasons. But the airlines can shuffle bags at their discretion to help them find their owners.

Steph3n

That is correct.^

sfogate

If you bag has been scanned, we will be able to access that information. Not sure if AF does scanning or if our international cities do either. I know that CO's hubs have scanning equipment, as does SFO.

Usually only baggage service employees know this computer entry.

channa

I've done several interline bag connections, never with an issue. Do you have unusually short connections at major airports? Or maybe interlines at airports that aren't used to interlines?


And as we know with CO, if you deviate from the norm, they often don't do too well. A buddy of mine checked a bag on a CO connection in BWI, he asked me what he should do. He had a long enough connection at BWI, so I told him since this is CO, go to bag claim and watch the connecting bag come out on the belt. Sure enough, CO wasn't expecting this, and the bag came out on the belt, despite being tagged onwards.

I know other airlines give their handlers a printout on any bag connections before the flight comes in, but maybe CO does not. If that's true, then this is an area where CO will need to improve quickly as they enter *A, since they'll now be making connections in places they had never thought of before.

qlabdad

Channa, It was a tight connection in CDG that originated this whole thing. I never intended to interline and never wanted to check the bag in the first place but AF made me. I wanted to pick it up at LHR and carry home.

CO told me the bag would be delivered on Sunday via express delivery. Of course I wasn't told what that meant and they deliver 24hrs/day! Got a call at 4:30AM this morning (Monday) from CO in my driveway. Woke up the entire house and scared the sh** out of me and my wife since it's never good news when the phone rings at that hr. I am home and there was no emergency to deliver the bag in the middle of the night. CO knew this. No common sense at all has been applied.
My bag was also damaged and rummaged through but that could have been security but they didn't put stuff back into pockets, etc.

I am so pissed. As a Plat/MM I can say from personal experience that CO is a good airline when things go right and I will still choose to fly them but is terrible during irregular opps, etc and apparently I can add baggage to the list.

Thanks for listening...

star_world

I'm not sure what the complaint is here exactly. Surely CO is just working within the limits of the information they have? CDG is a bit of a black hole when it comes to bags, I've had a bag misconnect there twice, which accounts for 50% of the total times it's happened to me.

CO, as the airline you took the final leg with, bears responsibility for getting the bag to you. This is standard across all IATA airlines. But this is no guarantee that they have all of the information. As a result it can take a while to figure out where the bag is, what flight it has been loaded on, etc.

As for the delivery time - well, this same point came up in another thread. The responses seemed to be split 50/50 between people who shared your view, and people who just wanted the bag delivered regardless of the time. I'm presuming the bag came in on a late flight to EWR (perhaps the VS flight?) and they sorted them and started delivering sometime after midnight. Did the tag state which flight it got put on?

What would you change here? It's never a pleasant experience but again, I fail to see what CO could have done differently here.

sfogate

Your bag has to be cleared by US Customs upon arrival. This is probably why your bag was rummaged through. As we all know the US Customs agents are not exactly careful about how they search through bags.

CO sends out bags as soon as they are received for delivery. Unfortunately, it seems that the baggage delivery company prefers to make their deliveries sooner rather than later.

Not sure where the fault lies with your delayed bag. It is assumed that AF failed to ramp transfer your bag in time to make your CO flight. As the last carrier you flew, it then becomes CO's responsibility to get your bag to you. As you have discovered, international flying creates a 24-36 hour delay in it's arrival. Most carriers will keep the delayed bag on a single carrier to lessen the chance that the bag will misconnect again. I am guessing that AF gave your bag to CO in LHR to expedite to EWR.