Annalisa12

Getting your bag back is compensation

ATLflyer2017

I had an interesting experience with pink tagged bags last September. I was flying a CRJ to Shreveport and I was stuck in line getting a coffee so I was among the last on the plane. The GA scanned my boarding pass, scanned the pink tag, then scanned my boarding pass again. He ripped the bottom portion off and gave it to me. I got on the plane and I got a notification saying that my bag was loaded onto the plane. Once we landed in SHV, I lined up in the jetway as one does on a CRJ flight. All the valet bags were brought up and mine was not among them. I waited a little longer, showed my tag to an employee and they scanned it. It had showed up as a passenger who was flying from ATL to CRW. Panic set in but they told me to go to baggage claim and speak to the baggage office there. Well turns out that it was on the belt...weird and I am now very weary of pink tagging bags. Doesn't seem to be as well documented as regular bag checks.

hortkie

My guess is that your bag never was loaded on the plane to CVG and your pink tag was never scanned.
In a post above someone asked if you had dropped your bag in the usual spot at the end of the jetbridge, and you replied that you had dropped it in the usual spot and also that you had waited until everyone boarding to wait to see if you could get the comps. And the GA told you to board and that your seat was not needed - any chance you left your bag near desk and walked down the jet bridge not even realizing ?

ATOBTTR

hotturnip

Doesn't your bag have regular ID tags on it? You'd think in almost any of the situations suggested here that someone would've called you by now.

I'm leaning towards the "never got scanned, never got put on the plane" hypothesis. But I'm wondering if it just dropped onto the apron or something and, well, got destroyed.

sydneyracquelle

Lux Flyer

Probably still depends on the GA and station. Outstations that have contract staff? Yeah more times than not (IME) they just walk around the gate area 30-60 minutes before baording and hand out the pink tags, telling people they need to put it on their bag and leave at end of jet bridge.

Of course they are much less documented. Both inconsistency in how they are applied/scanned, and the sheer flimsiness of them. Those tags snap off or tear super easily compared to the giant stickers we have for normal checked bags.

kdonnel

I had something similar happen and never got a call.

A group of 6 of us checked in and checked 9 bags. We got to our destination and 9 bags arrived. It was at that point we realized we actually had 10 bags. That 10th bag never got tagged, it got left at the baggage checkin at the departure airport.

I had a real hard time getting Delta to open a lost bag claim because I did not have a claim number.

Despite the bag being tagged with my name and phone number I never got a call.

Three weeks later I got a letter in the mail from the Orlando airport lost and found. They had my bag the entire time and wanted to know how to get it to me.

Odds are if the bag is found, a letter will be generated, not a phone call.

stephem

MSPeconomist

Often1

Presuming that this was a connection (as it appears to be), the bag is covered by the Montreal Convention even though it was gate-checked on a domestic segment. Thus, OP is covered up to a fair market value of approximately $1,660. While OP was headed home and there are thus unlikely to be any interim needs, if there are, OP may make reasonable purchases and submit those to DL for reimbursement. Their value will reduce the ultimate $1,660 should the bag never turn up. At 20 days the bag is considered lost.

It really isn't OP's problem to worry about who scanned what and how the bag came not to be loaded. The reality is that if he dropped it on the jetway, it was not loaded at all, somehow fell off or got dropped on the ramp, or highly unlikely was left on the jetway and then picked up as part of the arrival of the next aircraft. Also possible that it was simply sent to baggage claim either at DTW or CVG.

If the bag tag is a mismatch, DL will eventually look for the secondary name tag and if that has fallen off too, in the bag.

Keep checking the tag # on the app as it may eventually come to be associated with the PRN when located (or not).

HDQDD

FTFY.

Those pink tags only have 6 serialized digits (The last 6). When IATA designed the BMS (Baggage Messaging System) many decades ago, 1 million bags for one carrier probably was many weeks. Now I bet DL (et al) sees 200-250K bags per day checked and maybe a third to a quarter of that number valet tagged. Valet tags are given out in bulk to agents all over the World. It's entirely possible you just got unlucky that someone in ATL had the same number tag. Unfortunate that the agent didn't attach the tag to your PNR via a scan.

Bag tag logic is like this. Say we have tag 4016123456

4 - Is a carrier specified digit. For US carriers, this number usually identifies what *type* of bag it is...a normal checked bag, a valet bag, a separated/rerouted (RUSH) bag, or even some cargo, COBUS, or other.
016 - is the originating carrier ID. i.e. UA is 016
123456 - Last four digits are just serialized and then repeat

mdbe

HDQDD

Oops! You are correct. I guess everyone knows who I used to work for now. haha.

MSPeconomist