LOVE checking bags! 3 bags international as Gold x 70 pounds gets all my gear everywhere I need. GREAT benefit and almost never a misrouted bag. Thanks United!

Yes, the AirTag thing also helps….piece of mind?

Each to their own of course, but...

I don't like having to carry my bag around the airport, or going through TSA with it, or the whole overhead space thing, etc, etc.

But I do like the fact I know my bag is with me and isn't going to go missing (well, except that one time someone took the wrong bag off the plane and took it to Manhattan for me!). And the fact it makes irops, standby and overbooked volunteering easier. And the fact that I can be out of the airport before some people are even off the plane. And the fact that my bag is probably a million-miller by now, but could still pass for near new - with the only few marks on it being from times when I did check it.

For me, the positives of carrying on outweigh the negatives - but as I said above, each to their own and it's not surprising some others have a very different answer.

Mrs and I always check at least 1 bag.

1. Usually our suitcase is too large to bring on.
2. If we're on a longer trip, we each have one suitcase. If we're on a shorter trip, we combine into one larger suitcase rather than two smaller ones.
3. We just hate lugging suitcases any farther than we have to.
4. I have a bunch of photography equipment and it goes in a roller-board size suitcase. I used to carry it on board, but now I just check it. I carry my camera body, one lens, and my batteries in my carry on. All of my lenses in the roller board are placed in thick padded sleeves to protect them from shock. I've never had an issue.

while I dont go out of my way to pack more than I need - it is nice, when I am away for a week or so, not to have to cram everything into a carry-on and bring a few extra little things that make work travel a little more bearable and like being at home......

It’s nice, but for me depends a lot on time crunch. Fighting the luggage gods, and worse, having to claim anything for lost luggage, feels like it takes more time than the effort of rolling aa carry-on up to the pre-boarding line. And then if you have a meeting the next morning that requires a suit…

I always check my bag if I have flexibility on receipt at the destination. For work travel, I will usually take a rollaboard on the plane for travel to the destination then check it for my return flight. I prefer not to attend meetings in travel clothes although I'm sure the people I work with would understand if I end up having to plead baggage being lost.

We check golf bags regularly as a lot of our travel will involve a day to play no matter where we go. On return to DEN, it was not unusual to wait 30+ minutes for the golf bags to show up in the past. However, on our last two trips with golf bags, they were waiting for us when we got to baggage claim. I don't know if they have changed procedures at DEN, or we just have been lucky.

We rarely check anything with clothing, but when we do it is a nice feeling to not to have to drag a suitcase along with you.

3 of my last 4 checked bag experiences with UA went poorly. And even though yesterday's went smoothly, I waited 30 minutes for my bag to come out, at the farthest possible carousel (1) at IAD from where you come back out from the terminals.

I check a bag when I have to; I don't check one otherwise, as being carryon-only gives me a lot more flexibility and one less worry. I typically use checked bags when I need an extra bag (such as when doing photography; my big camera rollaboard comes with me, and clothes etc,. get checked) or transporting liquids (like yesterday, with 7 bottles of booze).

I find my self checking bags much more frequently, just do to the nature of my current travel. I am generally not concerned about getting lost or the extra time waiting for them on arrival.

I definitely prefer moving about the airport without the extra bag.

The one thing that does make me nervous is IRROPS. No doubt much easier to navigate if you don't have to worry about where your bags are.

Both of these art important IMO. The lengthy delay with UA bag deliveries are dissuading many to check bags. The other one is equally important with irops or SDC that simply won’t compute with a checked bag. Yes, I know, it can work and I had an SDC in January where the system automatically re-routed the bag and it arrived with us - no, I didn’t buy a lottery ticket that day.

I've only used bag delivery once this year when mid-trip, and that because the airport I arrived at was 1:45 from where I was staying. It was still the night before I flew home that they finally delivered it (3 days into the trip).

That's not a rare occurrence IME. Even when I have a bag delayed returning to IAD, I know it's usually not going to show up until the middle of the night 24-48 hours later... I just don't want to trek back to IAD to grab it unless I have to. Had a 24 hour delay into ORD for a bag last month, and I had them hold it at ORD as it was only a weekend trip... and even then, it took an hour for someone at ORD to go and unlock the bag (none of the UA employees seemed to have a key, and the baggage office sent me to the cage without even checking if there was an agent there with a key). ORD was also 40 minutes out of my way to go back for the bag, so overall, I wasted nearly 2 hours. Still haven't been able to get reimbursed for the minor purchases (I got the runaround repeatedly about needing an open case, then they closed the case because the bag arrived; ultimately, it was like $15 and it wasn't worth wasting any more time pursuing it).

Just not convenient.

maybe I have been lucky as - the issues are not that bad as usually the bags will take the next flight or even arrive sooner
on an IRROPS last year: DEN-OGG, which is often delayed - this time due to a flat tire and the options out of DEN get limited very quickly...so, I changed to DEN-SFO-OGG. The SFO-OGG had a problem and I spent the night in SFO...finally made it to OGG, still early enough the next morning to get to work, which was critical - the point is that my bag stayed on the original DEN-OGG flight which eventually went out, a few hours late, but my bag got to OGG before I did and UA held knowing that I have changed to SFO-OGG.....

with their new luggage tagging systems, it is much easier to track stuff and even when it goes AWOL - much easier to find and resolve.... I cant recall the last time a UA bag went MIA for days

Remember on FT usually only worst or best results are posted and you really don't get a representative sample. We have 100-200 regular posters, 1,000+ contributors, many thousand readers. UA transports close to 1/2 million passengers daily and 180 Million annually. 5-10 (How many check bags, no idea - but when I do, the numbers of passengers waiting for bags is significant). Reports either way about bags on FT is not statistically significant.

Wine - exactly my point..... everyone complains about checking bags, even though the bin/carry-on game sounds like it is getting worse.... but is checking really all that bad anymore now that UA seems to have upped their game
in the math of time (waiting) vs headache (lugging carry-on's) where do we stand?

more and more, I kinda like not having to carry anything except a small computer bag with some other essentials....