DJMeatBall

It took about 45 minutes for my bags to come out in DTW last night, but I didn't try to claim the miles due to the long line at the baggage services desk.

captiveguru

I do not think you claim the miles at the service desk. You have 3 days to fill out and file the online claim form.

http://www.delta.com/contactus/pages...ntee/index.jsp

captiveguru

If everyone did this, or even if everyone who does not check bags start to check bags the system will be overwhelmed...

Further, how many extra bags can the planes handle? 10%? 20%? It only took a few dog crates to cause DL to not load all of the dogs on that JFK-SEA flight...

Auston

Indeed, it took 45 minutes at DTW last night for the flight arriving from San Juan.

Submitted my claim this morning and it will be interesting, as we were traveling on award tickets and the T&C state that the guarantee applies to paid tickets. Will post a follow-up when I hear back.

captiveguru

Another way to overload the system is to submit claims one knows will be denied...

HDQDD

I'm assuming the "20 minutes" is from when ACARS sends the "IN" time to when the bag gets scanned at the carousel. For most carriers the "IN" time is when the Captain sets the parking brakes. The carousel scan can happen a few different ways. Either it's automatically scanned by a scanner array as it travels through the conveyor, or in smaller stations, the ramper scans it manually with the same handheld scanner you see gate side. In some systems, it may take another minute or two before it gets to the claim side.

FWIW, I worked for another airline in the early/mid 2000s. We had internal metrics on all kinds of bag data (I designed some of it). We knew which stations did best at delivering priority bags before regular bags, overall bag delivery times, etc. We used to send a weekly report to all the station GMs ranking their performance. I like to think that DL has something like this too...

Friday, when I returned home to RDU from LAX, I figured it would be an easy 2,500 SM since they often take 30+ min for bags. Had my bag in 16 minutes (from the *IN* time). Hopefully this will be a sign of good things to come.

MSPeconomist

Something that concerns me about this is that if bags are going to be late (more than 20 minutes), the station could have an incentive to claim that the bags were "lost" (i.e., not loaded onto the aircraft) to escape giving the miles. It sounds crazy, but if the miles are somehow charged to the station but lost bags don't incur a penalty for them, someone could decide to try this.

davetravels

I would think that if the official reason is "the bags were lost" - meaning that they hafto be delivered by a delivery company, DL would be less happy with this scenario having to pay out real cash for delivery vs a few petty SkyPesos.

HDQDD

In that case they would incur a penalty. It would be an arrival mishandling that would ding the arriving stations mishandled bag numbers. We researched an average cost of a mishandled bag about 10 years ago. Back then it was just under $90 per mishandled bag (including delivery, customer perception, and labor to track it and set it up for delivery). I'd imagine that number is higher now.

This would be far worse than paying out < $25.00 worth of SM...

Internally, all airlines "code" each delayed/lost bag to where and for what reason the mishandling occurred. So if a bag is checked CDG-ATL-VLD and it takes to long for TSA to screen it in ATL (which they can tell by the time the inline scanners report), it would be coded as ATL/TSA screening delay (or whatever the code is for it). This way, stations can track their failure areas and try to improve. There's actually a ton of information that is passed around just for bags. Arrival mishandlings are one of the worst to get dinged with, since it is the easiest to prevent.

When we look at the app, we only see the scans DL allows the public to see (i.e. checkin, planeside loading, and claim area delivery). Internally, there are many other scan points, usually by automated bag sorters or agents/machines handling bags that are delayed.

davetravels

Since you seem to know something about this stuff - - and if anyone else would care to chime in . . . .

I believe I have noticed, while sitting at the departure gate, and using the app to follow my bags, that, once the app says "On the plane", sometimes the time is, like, 10 or 15 minutes behind, as I keep refreshing frequently. This makes me think that, while the baggage guy/gal scans each bag, there's some kind of mass dump into the system once they're finished loading a batch on the plane. So, I wonder, if this is true, might the arrival time at the belt be the time the entire batch pulls up at the secure side of the carousel vs the time each bag is unloaded onto the carousel?

ALSO . . . . I think you made MANY people LOL with this remark!!!

HDQDD

Back in my days on the ramp (non-DL) and in airport ops (non-DL), the answer depends on the airport. In hubs and large lines stations, they have RF coverage (think wifi) for all the scanners that would report data real-time. At the smaller stations they batch.

RF: This was cool in a multitude of ways, but mostly because it let the rampers loading the plane know how many bags they had left to load real time. It would also show a table with how many bags from each flight, what gate they arrived at, and what time. This can be crucial info at say D-5 minutes. If you see you're missing 20 bags from a flight that arrived 5 minutes ago, 2 gates over, you send a guy to go get them. If the gate offloads the pax (because they will misconnect) they also drop off the list. So ideally, when you're finished loading, there's nothing left on the list. I worked a lot on this program and it was really interesting. I've noticed the tractors at ATL have screens on them. I suspect they're somehow tied into this too to let the driver know his/her assignments.

Batch: In smaller stations, the scanners do not always have RF. So they batch scan and then upload after they finish using the scanner. This may or may not influence the delay you've seen. It could just be that they scrape these transactions every so often for the "public" view.

Auston

"Offer only valid on paid tickets for published fares; not valid for those traveling on employee pass privileges or employees of other airlines traveling on industry discounted tickets."

I paid for them with miles that were published on their website. I'm not at all trying to overload their system. The T&C above do not specifically exclude award tickets, so it behooves me to submit a claim.

apolloms

in time gets sent when pax boarding door gets opened, not parking brake.

davetravels

The term "published fare" has a certain meaning in the travel industry. An award ticket <sorry to tell'ya> isn't a published fare - or even an UNpublished fare.

But good luck, tho. Let us know what happens!

pbiflyer

Yep, that was my first thought.
But I am sure that they have so many caveats that they won't give out mile 1.

If they are so intense on good customer service, as their propaganda states, why is this only through March? Do they give up on customer service then?