Don't know if it was just blind luck, but all four of our bags came off first in VCE of all places - UA to LH via FRA/MUC (can't remember which - too many flights!)

At FCO they came off dead last. Tagged with the priority tag in AMS by LH.

For the past year, maybe 18 months, these tags have been working really well for me across the board.

My bag is always one of the first to come off the belt at LAX and ORD (my most visited stations), but I've also had it work well at outstations as well (DFW comes to mind recently). Internationally, it has always worked without fail.

I have no idea how it worked at LIT this weekend, as I waited forever for the bags to start unloading and decided to go rent my car and come back. When I returned 10 minutes later, they had already pulled the unclaimed bags back to the office. I thought for sure my bag had been delayed (soooo common in my LIT experience, but that was on Am Eagle), and I was filling out the form when they saw from the scan that the bag was there.

I check bags so infrequently that I don't even know what a priority tag is or who gets them.

Please clue me in.

Priority tags are special "orange" star alliance marked tags for premium/star gold passengers in Star Alliance careers when you check your luggage in. Hope this helps to clue you in :-)!

I'm clued.

I still have no intention of checking any luggage though I may have to in November when I fly LH MUC-VIE.

In my opinion, "priority" means that the baggage handlers give your bags priority when they need something for target practice, especially if you connect through LHR

Seriously, the priority tags seem to do nothing. My luggage may or may not turn up early on the belt. However, something is always broken if I had to connect through LHR....

I don't know if this will come as any surprise but the handlers at SJD have absolutely NO regard for priority bags, in fact, mine often come off toward the very end (not including my golf clubs which always come off last, even after the guys who looked like they tried to pack an entire hobie cat in a bag, I think they are windsurfers, but no clue).

I have, however, always gotten my bags promptly (the rare times I check) when at the following non-hubs: MSY, BOI, HNL

My only experience came 9/22 when my checked bag was the first on the conveyor at ORF. Unbeknownst to me, a priority tag was placed on my bag - maybe due to my (unsuccessful) waitlist for First for SAN-IAD-ORF. However it happened, it was nice to get the bag quickly and be on my way after a long day of flying.

I agree with some others here... Intl the tags do seem to mean "something"...

On my recent trip inbound to CDG and FRA my bags were the first to come off after having to WAIT perhaps for the priority bags to be move ahead of others off-loading the planes... but still it was in there with all the others..

However, coming home (SFO) well, that's another story as well.. Sometimes it a priority, other times I begin to wonder if I even checked it in the first place...

After many years of waiting for my bags to come anywhere between first and last depending on day, airport, phase of moon, the last 2 flights on which I have checked bags, all of our bags were first off. One was US air domestic (arriving SMF), the second was MEL.

YMMV.

Lurker

The priority tag on my last checked bag sure didn't mean much when they were deciding which bags to put on my IAD-AMS flight...About 20 of us didn't get our bags. Most of them had had late connections at IAD, but I had a 3.5 hour layover.

Luck of the draw, I guess.

FWIW, during the past few years I haven't noticed that my bags come out particularly early as a result of the tags. However, Singapore and London seem to be pretty consistent about offloading the priority bags early.

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5C1 Safari/525.20)

I'm traveling with family on vacation right now and checked bags for the first time in a while, so I got to experiment with the priority tag effect.

SFO-DEN-LHR(UA)-HEL(KF): Arriving at HEL we had to wait for all bags from this flight forever as Blue1 and SAS share the ground crew and they were way understaffed. When bags finally came on belt 1hr 20min after arriving at gate (sic!), 3 out of 4 of our bags came out among first. The 4th had been left in LHR as a 3 hour *A connection there had apparently been too tight <rolleyes> but at least we got nice *A overnight kits to give as gifts to relatives

HEL-WAW(KF): Our four bags were the first to drop on the belt and arrived just as we walked up, zero waiting. Much better than what we expected from Blue1 & Warsaw ^^

WAW-MUC-SFO(LH): I'll let y'all know in a couple of days

I came from SDF - IAD and was in first from ORD to IAD so I had the "Priority" tag on my bag. By the time I got to the roundup, my bag was just coming up the belt. With all the other bags with the lovely orange tags!

Kudos - I might begin to check bags more often if that continues.

Not to hijack the thread, but, now that I am a 1P, do I automatically get the bag tagged this way no matter if I am in first or coach?

EDIT: Never mind - I just found the answer on the wiki page!

Although only a lowly 2p (I'll hit 1p on my return flight...) I don't get priority baggage handling, I'm happy to note that, while waiting for my luggage to come out, I noted that the first 15-20 bags had priority tags.

This was at LAX about 9pm...

-K

For the first time at ORD--at least in my experience--all the bags that showed up first at baggage claim had priority tags.