Often1

First, OP simply has it wrong. The companion was not entitled to priority luggage. Presumably the agent gave up because it's not worth tying up the line for 2 minutes, let alone 15.

Second, the orange tag is a "feel good". All that matters, if it matters at all, is the priority baked into the bar code. The orange tag is to make people feel important when they are not.

This was a ridiculous waste of time and got OP and companion exactly nothing.

exerda

Sure. Even accounting for all of my flights, I don't have a big enough data set to be significant. I will say that several of the airports I frequent seem consistent: MCO is consistently bad, for example; SAN seems consistently good.

PVDtoDEL

I'm not convinced that the priority tags are useless - I was once on a heavily weight restricted ORD-PVD flight where a lot of bags got bumped off at ORD. The priority tagged bags made it just fine though,

Kacee

Not useless, but frequently meaningless.

zeer0

Because it was just Mexico-US, *G only gets 1 checked bag each. So I couldn't put both in my name.

But in the future, I will do this if the *G allowance is >1 bag.

SFOdelayed

LimeyFlyer

I flew LH a few weeks ago, and somehow their priority tagging for their top tier equivalent seemed to work... those bags came off first, and were neatly stacked by a guy who was catching them as they came down the luggage chute. Now that is something that I would like.....

IME, as others have said, the "priority" or "VIP" tagging has been meaningless for me, so why even argue for the tagging in the first place.

zeer0

The UA site says companion was entitled priority luggage. See what I say below in the last response.

There was no line, so I didn't feel bad getting my entitled benefits.

You're certainly right, the priority should be baked into the printed baggage tag. My initial question is why this wasn't done so when the UA site lists that companion baggage should also be priority.

At SFO, priority tags make a big difference. Priority bags always come first. It's the only airport for which I would care about this. I wouldn't have said anything if we were flying anywhere else.

At SFO, priority tags do make a difference. Priority baggage at SFO has always come out before non priority in my experience. In fact, SFO is the only airport I've been to where this is consistently the case. If we had been flying anywhere but SFO, I wouldn't have said a word.
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I was quoting the UA site on Premier Access benefits. It states there that a companion of someone eligible for Premier Access is also eligible for all Premier Access benefits. One of these is priority baggage.

WineCountryUA

Not in my experience, but that is neither nor there

Yes, but note the companion footnote only applies to MileagePlus Premiers

Note also the specific mention of Premier Status in the footnore

Kacee

Nor mine. I mean really not my experience. My last two long-haul SFO arrivals, my bag has come out towards the end.

findark

I'm always surprised by the hating on the priority tags. My bags don't come out first every time, but I would say at least 9 times out of 10 they are in the first 20% of bags to hit the carousel. The occasional time when they come out last is a huge contrast for me, so I'm a little surprised by other experiences.

zeer0

"Customers traveling on the same reservation as someone who is eligible to receive complimentary Premier Access will also receive complimentary Premier Access."
This is the key. *G is eligible to receive complimentary Premier Access so so will their companion(s).

I understand the confusion based on the fact that the asterisk is next to UA Premier members, but the wording of the asterisk section outweighs this.

And companions I've traveled with have always gotten Group 2 boarding for example, so other Premier Access benefits are in fact hard coded in for them. Just the Priority Baggage one isn't hard coded for some reason, which I don't understand.

WineCountryUA

... but that footnote applies just to MP Premiers

How does it "outweights" the explicit placement of the asterick???

The fact you have gotten some companion benefit does not change the fact there is no statement on the UA site explicitly providing the priority bag benefit. There is nothing to use to get the benefit if not provided.

zeer0

Whenever I fly on United with a companion, it literally says "Premier Access" on both my boarding pass AND my companion's boarding pass. Both in the app and on printed tickets. So I do get "all" the benefits.

The issue is simple. For some reason, United's systems don't automatically print out "PRIO" on the printed baggage tag. This seems like a simple fix on United's part. I'll be writing in to clarify and will than update the original post.

makrom

So I learned that there is quite the range of what one would consider to be a "very unpleasant incident" with UA. Some say it's getting your face smashed in and dragged off the plane, others to rightfully get priority baggage tags for companions declined. Who am I to judge...