Dipsticks of the world, Unite!
And stand directly next to the carousel!
Especially if your bag is nowhere in site!
And have a cart parked there, too!


If you think this is a problem in the states, try Asian luggage retrievals serious demonstrations by large masses of people who do not understand geometry, game theory, or common courtesy.

However, in PVG at least the baggage carousels don't have edges, it makes it much easier to retrieve bags.

Tokyo, though....long, long ago: I was 9. We had already retrieved our bags. This was before the days of wheeled baggage and we were going to a lot of places wheels wouldn't have worked too well, anyway--our primary bags were backpacks and we were wearing them at that point. This creep comes along and slams through between me and my parents. I'm knocked to the side and land pack-first on the carousel next to me. Sitting up from a laying position with a backpack on isn't easy in the first place, it's worse when you're being carried around like a piece of baggage. I finally managed to roll myself off the carousel but it was two hours before I found my parents in the crowd--the normal advice to stay where you are if you get lost doesn't work when you have no idea where that was!

In hindsight what really surprises me is that nobody tried to help me up.

It's not a prvilege. It's unavoidable. Or put another way: the only way to avoid it is for the other person to step away from the caroussel. I will not wait for my bags to come around again just because of inconsiderate people -- especially because the situation won't be better after one turn of the caroussel.

And no, I'm not striking other passengers with my luggage on purpose.

HTB.

Have any of you ever seen anyone jumping onto the carousel to get their bags? Sometimes I have this overwhelming urge to sit on that thing and go for a ride. Fortunately I have resisted to date.

Excellent idea!

Totally agree with the OP though. Terribly annoying when luggage lice cluster around the conveyer.... and then have the nerve to get shirty when you ask them to move aside for ten seconds so you can pick up your suitcases as it waltzes past

Thought experiment: what would truly rational behavior in this situation be?

I think it would be for everyone to stand back at least twenty feet from the carousel. That would be plenty close enough to see your bag when it came out, at which point you could easily stroll in a few seconds over to the carousel and lift your bag off with no one in your way and no chance of bumping some one with it.

This would be in everyone's interest and would have virtually no down side. It wouldn't even be any slower -- the typical passenger, instead of standing and waiting for 30 seconds or so for their bag to reach them after it comes through the little door, would just use that same time to walk over to the carousel.

Of course, this would only work if everyone did it. But since everyone doesn't do it, no one is going to.

As this is the singular largest pet peeve I have about flying, it may sound bad, so a diatribe is coming on the topic. The easy part is not hitting someone with my now-arcing bag. The hard part is motivating myself to avoid doing it. Some day I'm afraid I'm just not going to care anymore and let someone have it. And while there are already strong feelings on this thread about how lashing out at the belt lice is unacceptable and while I'm normally a very polite person (otherwise I'd be right up there, all elbows, mobbing the belt), there's something about airports that brings out the stupidest in people. Or in my case, the urge to send a 60lb bag arcing off and laying someone right out.

As is, I just pick my spot downwind from where the bags come out and stand about 5 feet back (always a clear spot, I don't intentionally stand behind people and then get indignant. That would be stupid). But I always leave enough that someone could walk between me and the belt with a luggage cart so as to not impede them. Occasionally when I'm with my GF, I'll announce "there it is", but not for her benefit. That's a warning to the people in front. But if it's clear that the person in front is not about to pick up a bag or move out of the way, I make no effort to be discrete and polite about walking straight toward the belt to pick them up, making space as necessary (unless it's children or people with mobility issues, obviously). Anyone who choses to stand in the way has put themselves there knowing I'm behind them, and as such accept the chance that their bags might come out afterward. Normally, they do. They're also generally rather heavy, as I like to do some stocking up on the local specialties wherever I go, the added bonus being not too much danger of people taking them.... very far.

While it may seem rude, at this point I just don't care anymore. I've seen multiple instances where people bunch up at the baggage carousel directly in front of me so that one person can take the bags off and the rest stand around an point out which bag belongs to the person taking the bags off. You're travelling together! This is your bag! How can you not know this?! Or, in another situation, three college girls getting bags off directly in front of me, all of them waiting around for all of the bags to appear. When they go to a coffee shop do they get their coffee and stand at the till for everyone's drink to show up? It drives me mad, really. So there's no love lost anymore.

After a particularly nasty trip home at Christmas (brilliant trip, just some slow luggage), I got into a discussion about this with my brother who, while travelling less, is much more realistic with his expectations of people and as usual he brought up a good point: Even if everyone stands back, the benefits to one person pushing forward are much greater than the drawbacks. It's the big problem with everyone taking three big steps back, that only one person needs to do it to kill the system (because people at the airport are sheep, even more than normal). Game theory says mobbing the belt is the most efficient solution if you're only concerned about yourself.

While it would be great to set up a system to fix this, I think the only real way to achieve it is to actually make sure priority tagging works and that the FF bags do come out first, in some sort of reasonable timeframe. Then at least there's the chance that if you get there quickly enough, there won't be the belt lice as they've been caught up on the way. Occasionally this has worked at LHR T3, where I can breeze through immigration and have the bags come out with the first canister, while the lice are still jammed up, probably stuck in the tensabarriers like a net, if they aren't confused between a passport and a shoe.

Gah, just thinking about this is getting me irritated.

And what about the people who while they're waiting for their bags park a luggage cart right next to the belt. Don't park it a few feet away and carry your bag over to it, no that wouldn't take up enough space. (Some exemption of course for bags too heavy to carry even a few feet or people physically unable to lift and carry their bags, but experience shows that this isn't true of most cart-parkers.)

Good points, but if you've a tight connection and still have to clear customs after retrieval, who's going to risk missing a bag on its first time around?

LOL You are funny. Were you that guy?

If someone gets in close beside you I see no way to avoid the bag hitting them other than simply not taking the bag--but in that situation you'll have a carousel full of bags that nobody can take, deadlock scenario.

Fortunately, most people have enough sense to give the person lifting the bag off a bit of room.

Or what happened to us last time around--the connection was reasonably tight and the baggage was way late getting off the plane. The recheck window was getting rather narrow by the time we got our bags.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand your issue here. You were standing in a spot. You vacated that spot. Then another person stood in the vacant spot. He was right in this situation. What exactly entitled you to that particular section of floor? Of course he was offended when you told him it was your spot, I would have been too.

Depending on the bag, I can usually pick it up and swing it back over the carousel to then back up slowly. Usually. Not always, though.

But it's amazing how many people don't realize that you're there to do the same thing they are, and don't give you the space. They're too busy looking for their bags?

Melbourne airport (australia) has a lovely big blue line for everyone to stand behind while waiting for their luggage and it works well. Contrast this to T2 at LHR which is a complete and utter disaster. The last time I went through there, the area didn't seem much bigger than a tennis court, there were at least 4 carasols and about 8 arriving flights plus around 500 bags on the floor, obviously from flights where the luggage didn't make it on. There was physically no room to stand back from the carasol!