Priority Baggage
 

Now that oneworld has implemented alliance-wide priority baggage, how is this working down under?

Are OW priority tags being honored? Are the bags actually coming out first? how do you get priority tags for QF if everybody tags their own bags? i doubt they leave a container full of priority tags for the taking.

Haha experiences people! tell your stories.

The best: LAx-SYD in J with F (yellow) tags. Bags already on carousel as we walked from Immigration. This was 2 weeks ago. I really doubt if there were many if any people from our flight in front of us. A dream run.
The worst: QF into AKL with all priority bags being delivered at the same time 30 min after the last non tagged bag was delivered (truely!).
No real trends on intervening dozen flights with AA and LA - but still no confidence that you can rely on priority delivery.

Completed combined DAS13/DONE3+some extra sectors last month.
CBR-SYD-oNRT/HND-HKG-JFK-oDCA/PHL-oCAE-CLT-oJFK-oBOS-MIA-oLAX-oSFO-LAX-oLAS-LAX-IAH-ORD-oDTW-ORD-DOH-oCDG-LHR-DXB-LHR-oPEK-HKG-SIN-HND-oITM-HND-SIN-MEL-oCBR

In most cases, bag was among the first batch out. Though some ports took 30+ mins for anything to come out.

Is there a reason for this thread? Are you travelling QF?

QF, unlike BA can actually make priority baggage work and has several forms of priority.

As for tagging your own bags, I presume you mean NGCI? This should print the appropriate level of priority on the tag.

This I find funny. I have started a thread I am sure and posted on many just how substandard QF implementation of priority baggage is. On a QFF Advisory committee I advocated the poor implementation of a stated benefit long and loud enough to get removed (from the committee that is...!).

The substandard application is in my opinion the sole reason so many elites carry on only and so many once a year flyers carry 3 or 4 bags on if they can.

Last week alone landing in Adelaide (73H) - 28th bag off. Melbourne (73H) 19th bag off. NTL (via BNE) on crash8 - 21st bag off. Perth (A330) 47th bag off.

Statistically and allowing for J pax (I was in Y) if the priority baggage was adhered to wait would have been less than half on all bar PER (possibly)....

Intl landing in HKG or PVG tagging appears to be almost flawless. Back into Oz though......

QF indeed does have several forms of priority:
1) First on last off
2) In any order we damn well please
3) 1 priority, J or F for every 16 "common"

and so on..

For domestic self check in (even at the desks), a priority note comes out printed on the bag tag. There are no separate priority tags for self check-ins.

I fly to Australia ~6 times a year, granted on UA (mostly because oneworld before has lacked priority baggage or any kind of baggage benefits and i bring a lot of stuff to my aussie friends so ill take the 3 32kg bags on UA). My domestic legs are always on QF though since im AA Plat/OW Sapphire so this will be a nice change.

I know for AA/US (from a friend who is management there) they are constantly audited on the priority baggage delivery times so there is incentive there to actually get the bags to you in under 15 minutes. I'll be flying QF to aus via AA in Feb so i'll see if the interlining priority tags are honored at all.

Just curious does anyone know what the QF priority tags look like? Are they standardized to the oneworld (orange tag) look or are they their own special thing?

http://www.gayot.com/blog/wp-content...uggage-tag.jpg
http://wpcache.businessclass.se/wp-c...ag-800x300.jpg
http://aviation-news.net/wp-content/...-news-net1.jpg

side note: is there a reason BA has the tags but they dont honor other oneworld-tags?

QF are not as per OW standard. Perhaps are still using old stock? Perhaps QF sees no future in OW so isn't producing OW standard tags.

Yellow tags are F or OWE. Purple tags are "priority" for OWS and Business or OWE if there is no F cabin on the plane. And as per edy4eva, self serve tags are coded / printed with "priority"

AIUI, the main purpose of the BA tags is to stop the passenger asking for a priority tag; at least at LHR T5, the priority tag does nothing to get the bag into a priority can because the baggage system can read the bar codes but can't read the priority tag, and humans are not involved in routing the bag to the priority can.

BA only has one tag, no differentiation between OWE/F and OWS/J. I believe until recently BA never published priority baggae as an elite benefit or based on COS.

Whenever I have flown BA, an it's always in F, the tags have meant nothing, yet the crew are always able to pickup their bags before all the other pax. Of course crew bags should be priority, my point is that they can make priority work when they want to.

I don't check bags on domestic, but on QFi I have always had good priority baggage on QF with yellow F tags except ports where there is no F cabin and they don't use those tags.

No, BA does have a yellow first/Emerald tag as well as the orange one in the picture.This is usually a consequence of the fact that the crew tend to drop their bags late in the check-in process. By the same token, short connecting bags often come out very early. And priority for crew bags (if it actually exists as such) doesn't always do the job; there have been plenty of times when I've seen crew bags come out much later, often after many economy bags.

Qantas and priority baggage are not synonymous. It depends on the moon, tides and weather as to what happens at the carousel on arrival.
This is one of two worst(> or = to boarding ) aspects about traveling with Qantas as a priority pax from as as far back as I can recall.....'priority joke' is more an apt descriptor. Qantas is still at kindergarten level here compared with the likes of JAL, CX etc.

In all my years flying BA F, I have never seen these. That said my last BA flight was 2 years ago.

seat 4_d

It's been my experience that the word "priority" means nothing when I fly QF. Of course, I imagine baggage handling has been farmed out to some contractor or other who doesn't give a toss. It's no wonder so many people carry everything, including the kitchen sink, on board with them these days. However on my recent trip O/S, I found this is not just an Australian thing - Canada, UK, US, Ireland etc. - all the same.

And that just adds fuel to the fire...the continuous pathetic and ad nauseam response every time I complain...." we outsource our baggage handlers" as though it absolves Qantas of responsibility.