Ideal luggage handling
 

Well, there has been discussions regarding our priority tags and how usually nothing works etc.

You can guess how surprised I was going through the immigration in PVG just to notice that luggages started to arrive to the belt and found our the following: there were actual signs on the belt - "Business class luggage", "Economy class luggage" and Business class luggage actually came out first, including my bag.

So, priority tags and business class luggage priority works in certain airports (PVG so far in my experience).

Points to SAS!

Actually the priority stickers works most places.. Just not at CPH :(

Hmmm, then it is me. Stickers do not work in ARN, LHR, ORD or TMP for me. :( I cannot remember when was the last time I actually saw my luggage come among the first luggages (if we don't count the PVG).

Well.. I can't speak for the airports you mention as I seldom travel with checked-in luggage to LHR nor the other airports mentioned.
However in Asia it works almost every time :)

Usually it is just me who has weird problems. I am a problem collector :)

Well, you can have some of mine whenever you want!:D Do you collect all kinds? :p

I also have very mixed experiences with the tag.
At ARN for example the luggage can be just as well among the 10 first as well as among the last 10, you never know...
Earlier this week at ARN (flight from CPH) among the first 20 bags I think 10 had a priority tag, I was very impressed, at other times (most of the time at ARN) it is just embarassing seeing the priority tagged luggage arriving on the belt when almost all other passengers have already left, what's their problem at ARN??

At LHR arriving on SAS it works some of the time, maybe 50%, at least they are never among the last ones.

At CDG is works sometimes (although mostly not). Arrived four hours ago at CDG on SAS and this time is was acceptable, on the bus to the train station I noticed the only fellow SAS passengers on the bus were the ones with priority tagged bags.

I have much better experience with Lufthansa where it does work most of the time.
At TXL arriving from MUC: first on the belt.
At PRG arriving from FRA: second on the belt (the priority bags arrived totally separate from the others).
At LIS arriving from FRA: second on the belt.
At MUC arriving from LHR: fourth on the belt.
At LHR arriving from MUC: already on the belt when entering the arrivals hall.
At ARN arriving from FRA: sixth and eighth on the belt (I give that honour to the FRA baggage handling staff...)

HA!

Priority tags don't work. Period! If it works, it's a rare thing.

4 of my EBG buddies and I monitored Priority luggage handling for 3 months last year and reported it to SAS. 7 out of 169 flights the priority luggage came out first (!)

And SAS admitted it's a big problem for them and it doesn't work.

The worst airports:

OSL (by far! priority luggage never came out first)
ORD
LHR
TOS
BOO
TRD

If anyone wants to see my excel sheet on this project, shoot me an e-mail.

And from my last week of travels (on vacation):

OSL-LHR: didn't check bags
LHR-NCE: not even close to first bags out (we checked 3 bags). Waited 5 minutes after first bag on belt.
LIN-LHR: Oh man, what a joke, the last bag came out at the end.
LHR-OSL: My one bag came out at the end, took 15 minutes :mad:

You wrote to SAS and they admitted it is a problem...
So why don't they do anything about it?
Give these baggage handling guys some proper training and implement procedures to it does work. I mean how hard can it be??

At ARN they are absolutely worthless getting it right, it's like you can notice how these guys behind the wall just couldn't care less.

Well, SAS replied "it's not us, it's our handling agent SGS who are not doing their job... we will take the matter up immediately and blablabla......"

So the old outsourced, other company is to blame plot.

...last week, flying Izmir-MUC-CPH-GOT, on LH/SK, 1 bag checked, with priority stickers, and lufthansa priority as well on luggage tag. Bad was missing for more then 24hours in Munich, and no one at SK or LH really cared to try get any action to get anything moving. Apparently LH had a major breakdown last weekend in Munich with their baggage sorting...

Totally non existing service, had to wait about 60 minutes in GOT, as SK baggage tracing staff did not have a clue....

It always does for me... ;)

The key here is baggage loading at origin. MUC loaders keep Priority bags separately and load them last when loading small a/c that don't use the container system. That way they ensure priority bags get unloaded first and put on the belt first. The containers that go into the a/c have the same logic. If the ground handling has a different logic in both airports, this breaks down and the luggage comes out wrong. LH longhaul has their things sorted out at both ends, but in regional flights where two different airlines do the loading you can be sure of failure.

Well, crank it up to 1000+ flights a year landing at OSL and then we will see..

That seems like an accurate analysis of the situation. It normally works quite well on Lufthansa in my opinion.