Positive Passenger Bag Match for Group Passengers
 

Was told by an Emirates airport check-in staff that for a group reservation, the hold bag doesn't need to be tagged to the bag's owner, as long as the bag is tagged to any one of the group's passengers as they are all headed to the same destination. The baggage allowance is pooled between everyone in the group. This sounds fishy and counterintuitive against today's heightened security environment. Anyone heard of this being practiced?

When multiple pax on single PNR bags are generally tagged to one pax and a single bag tag issued. The allowance being pooled seems like a discretionary practice and certainly individual max weights apply (e.g. 32kg per bag or 23kg from North America and Africa).

Outside of the US where we live our lives less focused on imminent catastrophe this system works perfectly fine and is done in this way on most airlines.

I have traveled with family on the same flight but we were 10 people with 4 different PNRs due to diverging itineraries after our holiday. In NBO staff allowed me to check bags on behalf of others due to increased gold allowance but it had be tagged as my bag, so we couldn't effectively 'pool' our allowance. Same thing happened in DXB when we wanted to check in an extra bag after a long stopover; it had to assigned to an individual who still had allowance. Not sure if it would be different if we were all on one PNR.

Have had the same experience on other airlines when travelling as a group even with different pnrs. All the luggage gets pooled, makes for a faster and more efficient check in. Don't see this as a major security issue.

I suppose if one of the group gets offloaded somewhere along the way, the wrong bag would be taken off the cargo hold.

Or no bags get taken off.

Why would you think this is "bad" for security? What do you think positive bag matches do for security?

Terrorists can book in a group ticket and disappear somewhere along the way. His bags are tagged to someone else so they don't get offloaded even though he was a no-show on the connecting flight.

Air India bombing all over again ...

I always thought the principle is the bag has to positively match the passenger who owns it and follows him/her all along the journey.

Yea, but obviously plenty of terrorists blow themselves up. So what is the point of positive bag matching again?

By that logic there wouldn't be any need to check hold luggage since they'll strap their explosives to their bodies and blow themselves up instead. Would that sort of security make sense?

Yea, but it is pretty hard to get through even TSA with explosives strapped to your chest.

I think positive bag matching started after 9/11. Which doesn't make sense, because they didn't use their bags to crash the planes.

What you don't get is that many of these "safety rules" don't work for terrorists. They work for people who themselves are afraid to die (when they hurt others). But when you have people who are not afraid to die, the rules don't work anymore.

The whole point of making sure the passenger flies with the bag came after the Air India bombing out of YYZ, so there is a legitimate concern on the terrorism risk. I don't think the international aviation community should undo that lesson learned, and passengers probably won't appreciate a no-show's bag could be sitting right below them on a long international flight.

We can't guarantee terrorists will always use new methods to blow up a plane. The easiest way might be an old trick in the book?

Even if your notion was true, it would mean the terrorist was on the same PNR as someone who did continue flying, presumably their friend/colleague, so they'd sacrifice them?

Group reservations don't need to be people who know each other. Tour groups comprise of strangers put together. There might be families within it but not everyone will know each other so to intermingle their checked bags.

You can definitely travel as a single within a group tour, no show, and sacrifice the other strangers in your "group".

Hm ok I was thinking of groups as in a family on one PNR. Pooling and tagging to a single person in a group is a different story and I don't know what the policy is.

Regardless as mentioned upthread positive passenger bag match is useless. Also checked bags are screened, can't just smuggle anything through. I got into hot sh*t in JNB once for a replica firearm (don't ask). I'd be scared on US originating flights rather about pax carrying hand guns onboard since that seems to be quite easy.

It's a common practice, but to get round your fear what would happen if a member went missing is that all bags would be offloaded and remaining passengers asked to identify their own bags. The one(s) unclaimed don't go.