I don't care who it is outsourced to any 3 fingered monkey who can read can surely be taught that First (where available) comes before Business comes before Priority comes before nil, and measure them on it.

I reckon it is a concept I could teach my 8 year old inside of a week.....

The concept is easy - the issue is getting the baggage handlers to care, or even want to do it.

The whole concept of priority bags could be redundant if QF had a system like AS: http://www.alaskaair.com/content/tra...guarantee.aspx

Now that you have appeared for 2015 I really wish you would comment on these two areas, priority boarding and priority baggage. What strategies has Qantas in place to make these work?

You have the tags for the bags and the boards at the gates but the human factor keeps failing.

Small things in scheme of flying but pretty significant in making you stand out as a premium first rate carrier - namely to your premium pax!

I have been an elite flyer with Qantas for nearly 20 years and have yet to see these things happen consistently. As indicated/implied up-thread it seems to be hard to do if the work force has it ingrained not to support these 'benefits'.

Perhaps that ingrained attitude is alive and well here on FT too as evidenced by lack of a response

Qantas needs to work on this priority baggage thing.

a] they ignored my US airways priority tag on my LAX-SYD QF 12 flight. My bag was probably #200 on the belt. I even saw UA bags with star alliance priority tags coming out first... :-/

b] at the self check in kiosks, my tags do not print out priority despite me being emerald. The only way i got a tag was to do a bag check at a service desk. i know the system recognizes my status because my BP still prints FF EMERALD on it.

If you aren't checking in at a QF served port, with QF specific luggage tags then you won't receive priority. That said connections generally come out first, I thought?

Are you referrring to domestic kiosks in the second part? It would be a flaw if they didn't pick OW status for luggage priority.

dupliacted on edit

Ha! Qantas pay lip service to this ...management say yes, but the ground baggage handlers generally don't care and enforcement seems non existant.

With 2 decades as Qantas elite I have decided that if any bags I have checked come out in the first 10% it's a statistical anomaly.

Couldn't agree more. This week past alone - PER-ADL 75th bag onto the belt. ADL-PER - 54th bag on the belt.

First 21 bags off in ADL didn't have any priority. First 16 in PER.

Given that between these cities there would be 12J and not more than 15 SG/WP people on board, how hard can it be to load and unload with priority?

So this isn't one of those routes where 80% of the checked baggage qualifies for priority handling?

statistically that would not even exist. On a 73H that would need 134 pax of priority to check a minimum of one bag.

Why not?

If there are 160 passengers on board, only 10 of them check one bag each, but 8 of those 10 passengers is entitled to priority baggage handling, then 80% of the checked baggage (8 bags out of 10) will qualify for priority handling.

Obviously, that wouldn't have been the case on your specific flights given the numbers you cite. But whenever this issue comes up I am reminded of that QF study about the percentage of priority baggage on some QF routes, which AIUI led to QF basically terminating priority bags on those routes because it makes no sense to spend any money on it if 80% of the bags have priority.

That would be a rare and unusual event. Statistically I was told less than 25% of pax on a flight carry FF status priority (including QC Bronze) (excluding SYD-MEL obviously). So leave the 12 in J to one side, it is unlikely that more than 30 people on the flights carry priority.

Those who travel regularly are more inclined to carry on (and the only reason I checked this time was because I had a case load of samples to take over with me, the case home was almost empty) because of the delays at the other end, however it is fair to say if priority baggage was adhered to then my bags should have been inside the first 25 off.

As I said when the first 20 bags off are not tagged Business or Priority, then it is clear that the message has not gotten through to the baggage handlers.