aristoph

Inbound right now to ORD on AA 91 from LHR. Reading the above it seems the best advice is to use the hand luggage only line, not the G-E kiosks?

rhwbullhead

I was talking to a friend who works at T5 a few months ago. He said they would get annoyed by a Lori Lightfoot message talking about the airport award that would play every hour or half hour. He also said they couldn't believe it won an award and he said they could all think of airports that were better.

goodeats21

Realize this is now dated, but for future use and other readers, the GE kiosks are the best option at ORD. Not sure they even have a "hand luggage only" line anymore, but things change quickly there with all the construction.

cheltzel

My wife and I arrived around 08:00 about a week ago. We got lucky and arrived at M13 and went directly to the current GE kiosk location. There were something like 7 - 10 passengers from our flight in the GE line. Every single one of us had issues getting our passports scanned. I thought this unusual as my wife and I have used the current facial recognition process a couple of times before. A CBP agent came by and manually scanned us all through, constantly griping as to how we didn't know what we were doing. I pointed out that we had done this before and knew what we were doing. He passed us to baggage claim and afterwards I found out that most of the other passengers on our flight in the GE line were well experienced with the new process as well.

goodeats21

Interesting. I haven't had any issues with the new kiosks, but obviously something was going on then. Still would have to be quicker than the regular line thought, right?

cheltzel

We all were through in less than 10 minutes. The agent was over by the kiosks within 2 minutes after the first 2 or 3 of us ran into the passport scan issue.

We beat the remainder of the passengers to the baggage claim by 15 to 20 minutes.

Then we had to wait for our luggage. It took over over 30 minutes for the bags to start coming up on the carousel. Then we found that none of the priority tagged bags came up for at least another 15 or 20 minutes.

We arrived at the gate at 08:05 and finally left T5 with our bags around 09:15.

goodeats21

Thanks. Sounds about usual. I really try to avoid checking a bag if at all possible.

cheltzel

We were in South Africa on safari for about 10 days. With all the camera equipment, my power laptop (for image processing) and my CPAP, hand baggage only was not really an option.

goodeats21

For sure. I get it. I had to check a bag a month or two ago for an Asia trip. It does add complications and time.

aisleorwindow

Curious what airline you arrived into ORD on? That's an awfully long time to wait for luggage, even for T5.

cheltzel

ET574

I'm retired now but when I was gainfully employed I arrived at T5 at least 6 - 8 times a year. This happens at T5 more often than you might think. There were some bags coming out when we got the the carousel (about 15 minutes after the door opened at M13). But it was 2, 3 or 4 bags and then nothing for 3 or 5 minutes then 2, 3 or 4 additional bags, etc. The big bag dump didn't start for something like 30 - 45 minutes after we were getting out on the jetway.

And then to top it off, none of the priority tagged bags came off until the very last. And that seems to happen at T5 with some regularity as well.

IMO this is an ORD issue and not an airline issue. I've flown ET several times between the UA and sub-Saharan Africa over the last 5 - 7 years and I have found that ET's baggage handling is very fast and efficient. They consistently push bags through ADD on 20 - 30 minute connections with few (if any) misconnects on baggage.

ords

The bag room is being completely redone, but the inbound laydown belts for flights are not impacted by this. ET gates in the middle and the distance to travel is extremely short. I can't see this being an ORD issue but more along the lines of why is the handling company taking forever to offload from the aircraft, tug in, offload bags. The core gates are literally parked above the FIS.

cheltzel

The highlighted issue was what I am talking about. I assume these folks are hired/contracted by the airport and not the carriers. If this is true, it is an airport or CDA issue.

ords

Outside of UA, AA, DL and WN, all other carriers contract out to third parties at ORD.

cheltzel

Thank you. That's good to know. Is there any publicly available information on what third party works for a specific carrier?