SkyPriority checked luggage tag on Delta
 

Is there really a purpose to this tag when flying Delta? Or perhaps I just have a string of bad luck? LOL - bags always come in later, and roughly manhandled!

I've flown DL in domestic First and D1 (international) several times this year and on all but one occasion, my bags were in the middle of the pack. Also I notice that on most of these flights, a lot of the checked bags that come out first from the conveyor belt are not tagged SkyPriority (so I am not the only one with bad luck, apparently LOL). I've also had two damaged suitcases this year, my first year on Delta - a Samsonite and a TUMI.

When I used to fly AA/CX, I would always see the orange-tagged "OneWorld Priority" luggages in a separate luggage cart (on regional flights) and would always be loaded last. However, I often seen the yellow tagged bags on DL mixed with other bags on regional flights.

OTOH, CI seems to do a better job. I've flown several CI flights this year - in business class and in economy, with the latter being a SkyTeam Elite. On all of them, the red tagged "First Priority" (business class) came out first, followed by all the yellow tagged "SkyPriority."

I took a SEA-BOS flight in the middle of this year and it took almost an hour for my checked bag to appear on the conveyor belt. A few (non-tagged bags came out about 30 minutes after landing, followed by the domestic first bags much later!

My experience is very similar to yours. I imagine the ground staff sees so many priority tags in the US it makes no difference to them at this point. Much better service in Asia as far as priority tags go, but that’s with most things over there anyway.

At this point, I don’t expect anything from the yellow tags (except bragging rights of course), and honestly have been considering adding in some $ amount to each trip to recover the cost of damaged bags. In my experience the useful life of bags, even high end ones, can be very short.

On the rare occasions when I check a bag, my luggage has always arrived in the first 10-15 bags on the carousel.

I, too, have seen repeatedly poor performance in prio bag handling at DL.

Many years ago when I worked at one of DL’s competitors we actually tracked prio bag delivery at our top 30 or so stations.

We put in fixed scanner arrays at the claim areas and my team designed an algorithm and monthly report that was sent to every station as well as regional/divisional managers. It became one of the criteria stations were judged on. Users could drill down to every flight to see if there were trends (I.e. which shift is worse, etc) After only a few months the results improved significantly. I’m going to wager to say DL doesn’t do this.

Most priority tags on all the major airlines, are more to make the passenger feel important.
along with their luggage

I usually have good luck with the tags. Generally, my bag comes out in the first 10% or so of bags. There have been a few exceptions.

its hit or miss. Sometimes its first, sometimes its last. But you can bet your behind that if the clock hits 20 minutes I'm filling out a report to get my miles.

Priority and other features are all in the bar code. The tag itself is to make people feel self-important.

Whether it is useful in a given situation -- as you can see from above -- depends on when, where and the mood of the ground staff.

But, don't kid yourself, the tags are just killing trees.

Can you point me to more information about this? I just status matched to DL from AA and I have my first flight with a checked bag tomorrow. I can't find anything about this benefit on the website.

https://www.delta.com/bags/bagsClaimAutomation.action

Miles usually post instantly. Timed from door open to bag delivery (and I think DL automatically approves anything over 19 minutes).

How would ground staff know to load the priority bags from others without the yellow tag? Are they sorted before they're loaded on carts to take to the plane?

I complained in phx and was told by the woman working in baggage claims there that it would be too difficult to sort bags by sky priority tags. When I asked her why they had the tags if they are meaningless, she just shrugged.

i check a bag on every flight and I am about 80% my bag is in the first 20 or so. All domestic. Inisually checkin at the counter at least 1.5 hours before take off. If you cut it closer maybe there is a point the last bags on the plane don’t get sorted out.

Thanks! Bookmarking this page for future reference.

I end up needing to check a bag for about 75% of my domestic trips. Overwhelmingly, my experience in the last couple years has been that my bag arrives well before the 20 minutes is up, and usually in the first 20 or so bags on the belt. There are specific airports where I know yellow tagged bags typically don't come first, typically smaller airports where the bags are not handled by Delta ground staff. Never had any signs of damage, but it would be really hard to damage my bag anyway. I've had one lost bag, which was the result of IRROPs and accepting a rerouting via Twitter then changing to a better reroute once I got through on the PM line. The bag got retagged for the first reroute I accepted, which arrived 2 hours later.

FWIW, just a few weeks ago I was watching a bunch of bags get loaded on my SLC-DTW flight. I could see the ground crew checking all of the tags and grabbing the non-SP bags first and loading them into the forward hold. It seemed all the SP tagged bags went in the rear hold. So in this case, they were at least keeping them separate. Of course, that doesn't mean the DTW crews did anything with the nicely organized luggage.