It's been a cash cow for me. I've probably gotten 40K miles from late bags.

...which means you're waiting even longer for your bags. Delta wants 40K SkyPesos to be worth $400. $400 is not worth a year of spending an extra 20-30 minutes per trip at the airport. That's an hourly rate of around $15-30 even if you fly just weekly. Would you work for that amount of money?

I do pretty well at VPS making claims in the 20-25 minutes after cabin door opens time band. It's a small airport so it's never going to take too long, but things do bottleneck if they get two mainline planes in at about the same time and it's cheaper for Delta's accounting ledger to issue some service recovery miles because a handful of flights tend to have a median of 23 minutes to carousel than to hire another ramp agent (either working directly or throwing more into the contract ramp agent kitty).

I can remember getting off the plane next to a guy with a Platinum brag tag on his carry on who was all 'It's Saturday night and I see people getting off an Allegiant flight over there. It's always 23-25 minutes when you land the same time as Allegiant because they don't have enough baggage handlers to keep up with how the airport is growing. Don't forget to claim your miles."

And unknown Platinum guy was right- Thanks!

But it's even worse at small airports.. because at a place like VPS if you're near the front of the plane you should be out of the front door of the airport in like 7-8 minutes tops. And with bags you really don't want to order an Uber until you see your bag come out of the carousel.. which may be 5 minutes+ after the first bag comes out, even with a priority tag (Delta's system is based on when the first bag comes out, not the last) - whereas I can order an Uber while walking off the plane knowing I'll be ready to be picked up 5 minutes - meaning that it's really an extra 20-25 minutes, not just 10-15.

Point is, checking a bag rarely makes sense, and 2500 skypesos every few weeks certainly doesn't make up for it.

It rarely makes sense for you.

Like, why would you care enough about other people checking bags to get into an argument on the internet and tell them they're wrong? Who cares? They're not trying to make you check your own bags.

Fixed that for you in bold! :D

Well there are some things other people do that actually have an impact me. Checking bags isn't one of them. If anything, more people checking their bags is good for people who only carry-on.

True, I like when I'm on a flight where many pax checked their bags... makes for lots of overhead space.

Fundamental point: I'm cheap. Really really cheap in a picks up pennies from the street level cheap. :) I love All The Free Things and am more than glad to pick up a few pseudo-service recovery miles here and there .

Really? 10 of these a year would get you 25K miles, which you can still can plenty of advanced purchased domestic tickets for.

Sure, but those tickets you can usually get for $200-$250. The net-net is that you are valuing your time at $10-30 an hour (or potentially even less depending on the airport) which is probably well below what most people on this forum value their time at.

[MENTION=310725]pvn[/MENTION]'s comment - you are right, different people have different opportunity costs and preferences. For me checking a bag falls squarely into the "never makes sense" category, but for others perhaps it does.

I like free stuff.

Those cash prices are if you're talking competitive markets. In the land where Delta has probably 70% of the local passenger and gate counts, I've got a hard time finding cash fares for where and when I want to go and do not involve a departure time of the butt crack of dawn for less than $400 or so, With miles from here, I can 'pay' 27.5K with about two weeks notice for far better flight times so the Spousal Unit can go to a family memorial service on the other side of the country when the cash price was something like $650 round trip for bog standard economy.

In an uncompetitive market situation, my cheap self arbitrages the heck out of FF miles and typically gets 2 cents a mile or better on redemptions. (Another reason why I'm not part of the WN cult- dollar based redemptions with them are v. poor rates compared to those that I can float a bit)

Admittedly I don't use domestic awards much but I live in Atlanta - which is probably only slightly more competitive than MSP or SLC and don't usually see great redemption rates. Usually where I see materially over 1 cent per mile it's mostly because Delta is charging an extra $50-100 for main cabin and the award ticket gives you main cabin. I'd rather just fly Southwest (or even better, JetBlue) if that's an option than pay the Delta main cabin tax.

I'm sure there can be some decent last minute deals but for leisure travel I do actually book pretty far in advance so that doesn't give me much value. But, as mentioned above, different people face different opportunity costs so it may make sense in your case but not in mine.