Question re Alaska Airline Baggage Tag Requirement

Alaska AL asks that you put name tags on all bags with the usual name, add. etc, plus the phone # at the destination. Since we are cruising with Oceania - what type of phone # is required?

Oceania is having cruisers go to a Convention Center in Anchorage to embark. They have a local rep. there with an emergency phone #. Is that the # they want?

You only need your information on the outside tag on your bags. You can put your cruise information inside your bag if you like.

Alaska AL asks that you put name tags on all bags with the usual name, add. etc, plus the phone # at the destination. Since we are cruising with Oceania - what type of phone # is required?

 

Oceania is having cruisers go to a Convention Center in Anchorage to embark. They have a local rep. there with an emergency phone #. Is that the # they want?

AS/Alaska (not AL, which was Allegheny Commuter Airlines, Inc. d/b/a USAir Express); don't require anything. The smart thing is put a cel phone number on the luggage tag, and inside a piece of paper with the booking codes/dates/cruise line/airline ticket confirmations, but NOT your name an address

Alaska AL asks that you put name tags on all bags with the usual name, add. etc, plus the phone # at the destination. Since we are cruising with Oceania - what type of phone # is required?

 

Oceania is having cruisers go to a Convention Center in Anchorage to embark. They have a local rep. there with an emergency phone #. Is that the # they want?

ALL airlines ask for name and address tags on bags. How else can they deliver missing bags to your home address?

However, in Anchorage, you MUST have your Oceania tags on your luggage BEFORE you check your bags with the cruise line. I would recommend you NOT place these tags on your bags before you leave for the airport. They can be torn off!

Instead, take a moment after your claim your bags in Anchorage, and stick your Oceania tags at that time. How else will they know what suite to deliver to???

I agree with the idea of putting your cell phone number on the bag.

After you land you should put your Oceania tags on your bags.

Keith

ALL airlines ask for name and address tags on bags. How else can they deliver missing bags to your home address

We ask for your delivery info when you file a missing bag claim. The airline will NEVER just deliver the bag to the address on the bag tag. I've spent many years working the baggage service office and you would not believe the number of times people borrow a bag from someone and don't put their own info on the name tag. Or even better, they just put a blank name tag on the bag. Those are useless. I know your bag belongs to our airline. I don't need a blank name tag with our airline name on the back of it.

To answer the original question, best thing for the tag is your name and a contact phone number, preferably your cell number. If you don't have a cell number then give your travel info to a friend of family member and put their phone number on the tag, so that way if the airline does need to call, they can get someone who knows where the bag belongs.

But here's what you have to keep in mind. When we check you bag in, we put a destination tag on that bag. Sometimes those will come off for various reasons (not often but it does happen) so in those cases we rely on the name tag. But we are NEVER going to just deliver a bag based on name tag info. First and formost I'm going to try to find your name in our lost bag system. If I don't find it (you may not have arrived at your destination yet) I will look for your reservation and try to find where you are traveling to.

If I can't find your reservation that way, then I will call the number on the bag tag, and 99.9% of the time I find out that the name on the name tag is actually the name of the person you borrowed the bag from. But they are normally able to tell me where you were traveling to, and I will then send your bag to that city, and they will deliver it to the address that you give when you report your bag missing.

We ask for your delivery info when you file a missing bag claim. The airline will NEVER just deliver the bag to the address on the bag tag. I've spent many years working the baggage service office and you would not believe the number of times people borrow a bag from someone and don't put their own info on the name tag. Or even better, they just put a blank name tag on the bag. Those are useless. I know your bag belongs to our airline. I don't need a blank name tag with our airline name on the back of it.

 

To answer the original question, best thing for the tag is your name and a contact phone number, preferably your cell number. If you don't have a cell number then give your travel info to a friend of family member and put their phone number on the tag, so that way if the airline does need to call, they can get someone who knows where the bag belongs.

 

But here's what you have to keep in mind. When we check you bag in, we put a destination tag on that bag. Sometimes those will come off for various reasons (not often but it does happen) so in those cases we rely on the name tag. But we are NEVER going to just deliver a bag based on name tag info. First and formost I'm going to try to find your name in our lost bag system. If I don't find it (you may not have arrived at your destination yet) I will look for your reservation and try to find where you are traveling to.

 

If I can't find your reservation that way, then I will call the number on the bag tag, and 99.9% of the time I find out that the name on the name tag is actually the name of the person you borrowed the bag from. But they are normally able to tell me where you were traveling to, and I will then send your bag to that city, and they will deliver it to the address that you give when you report your bag missing.

Thank you so much for sharing your procedure.

Please tell me: do you ever look inside the bag to see if there's a written itinerary of the traveler?

When flying to a cruise I put 3 cards in the luggage tag slot.

The bottom is our name, address and phone #.

On top of that I put our name, the name of the cruise ship and sailing date and our phone #.

On top of that goes our name, name & address of the hotel and their phone #.

When we get to the hotel with luggage in hand I remove the hotel's card. Once in our stateroom I remove the ship card.

I could be wrong but this makes sense to me.

Mary Lou

When flying to a cruise I put 3 cards in the luggage tag slot.

 

The bottom is our name, address and phone #.

On top of that I put our name, the name of the cruise ship and sailing date and our phone #.

On top of that goes our name, name & address of the hotel and their phone #.

 

When we get to the hotel with luggage in hand I remove the hotel's card. Once in our stateroom I remove the ship card.

 

I could be wrong but this makes sense to me.

 

Mary Lou

The problem with this is if your luggage is lost for multiple days, then the address on top is no longer valid. If it's a simple delay, they will deliver it by the instructions you give them at the baggage office. But if it's a multiple day screw up, you have a better chance of getting your luggage back in the end if it has your home address instead of somewhere you'll only be temporarily.

then I will call the number on the bag tag, and 99.9% of the time I find out that the name on the name tag is actually the name of the person you borrowed the bag from.

Or one time with CO, the name/number on the bag tag was from the person the traveler bought the suitcase from at a garage sale. Never removed it. Seriously. The suitcase was sitting in their lost luggage area at IAH for weeks.

AS/Alaska (not AL, which was Allegheny Commuter Airlines, Inc. d/b/a USAir Express);

Surprised you are not travel savvy enough to realize that when someone refers to Alaska AL or American AL that AL means AIRLINE. :D. I wouldn't consider that it is a case of DYKWIA syndrom. At least I hope not!

Surprised you are not travel savvy enough to realize that when someone refers to Alaska AL or American AL that AL means AIRLINE. :D. I wouldn't consider that it is a case of DYKWIA syndrom. At least I hope not!

Actually it was a warning because a lot of people assume what airline code is their airline, and then mistag their own bag. I'm sorry you felt so offended by it.

Thank you so much for sharing your procedure.

 

Please tell me: do you ever look inside the bag to see if there's a written itinerary of the traveler?

If I can't find anything on the outside that leads me to a passenger, then yes. I always start with the outside pockets. People tend to stuff notes and such in those. If that doesn't pan out, then I look on the inside. Sometimes you find itineraries, but more often than anything it's medication or pieces of mail. As long as I can get a name I'm usually good to go. I hate going in the bag though because I have found out about a few people's freaky sides. One guy had polaroids of himself and some girl. No clothes in that pict. (full body shivers on my part).

There have been times though that there is simply nothing with a name on it. My advice to everyone is to put your info inside the bag. I've also spent plenty of time in the bagroom. Basically when you check your bag in at the ticket counter, and we put your bag on the conveyor belt, the bagroom is the other end of that belt. We've had bags come down where the belt system ate the tags or the handle (with the tags) so we have no idea who the bag belongs to. 25 point bonus screw up - the belt system in Tampa, and a few other airports now, combine all the airline's bags together (or in our case 4 groups of airlines) to go to screening, then get separated back out. The whole process is automated. If the system can't read a tag, or there is none, then it's supposed to spit the bag out at a default airline in that bagroom (we have 4 bagrooms). But sometimes it will come to one of the others. So we now have a bag with no tags and no idea which one of the 4 to 6 airlines in our bagroom it belongs to. It does help that the 4 different groups are completely separate from each other. So there's no possible way that an American Airlines bag could end up at the Delta bagroom since they are on separate concourses.

You can put your name and cell phone...NEVER put your home address. If you MUST put an address, use your business address. Any "crook" will know that if your bags are at the airport, you are most likely NOT home....no sense in giving directions!!!

I always put a copy of my itinerary, and name and cell phone number into an outside pocket of each suitcase. The suitcase itself is locked with a keyed Master lock.

The suitcase itself is locked with a keyed Master lock.

Of course if TSA decides to inspect your suitcase they will cut the lock if it's a non-TSA lock.

If I can't find anything on the outside that leads me to a passenger, then yes. I always start with the outside pockets. People tend to stuff notes and such in those. If that doesn't pan out, then I look on the inside. Sometimes you find itineraries, but more often than anything it's medication or pieces of mail. As long as I can get a name I'm usually good to go. I hate going in the bag though because I have found out about a few people's freaky sides. One guy had polaroids of himself and some girl. No clothes in that pict. (full body shivers on my part).

 

There have been times though that there is simply nothing with a name on it. My advice to everyone is to put your info inside the bag. I've also spent plenty of time in the bagroom. Basically when you check your bag in at the ticket counter, and we put your bag on the conveyor belt, the bagroom is the other end of that belt. We've had bags come down where the belt system ate the tags or the handle (with the tags) so we have no idea who the bag belongs to. 25 point bonus screw up - the belt system in Tampa, and a few other airports now, combine all the airline's bags together (or in our case 4 groups of airlines) to go to screening, then get separated back out. The whole process is automated. If the system can't read a tag, or there is none, then it's supposed to spit the bag out at a default airline in that bagroom (we have 4 bagrooms). But sometimes it will come to one of the others. So we now have a bag with no tags and no idea which one of the 4 to 6 airlines in our bagroom it belongs to. It does help that the 4 different groups are completely separate from each other. So there's no possible way that an American Airlines bag could end up at the Delta bagroom since they are on separate concourses.

Thank you so very much for your detailed information.

I guess I have a huge (maybe even freakish) worry about luggage, especially since we take a good number of TAs. With those, especially going eastward, you simply are gone for 6 days with no port calls and no way for luggage to meet you en route.

So I take extra precautions and actually spend more $$$ just to make sure that I have my luggage with me. For example, flying from PHX to FLL means that (1) even if I took the earliest flight out (2) my flight doesn't arrive in FLL until all the flights have left PHX for the day... so my luggage wouldn't have a shot of being placed onto another flight through a baggage claim procedure if I placed a lost luggage claim when I arrived. So, I go to FLL for a 2-nite stay if I'm taking an eastward TA. Maybe I'm just too cautious, but I don't want my vacation compromised by having a wardrobe problem both during the cruise and staying a few days post-cruise.

Now I know what to do to make my life easier and any baggage handler's life easier in the event of a carousel malfunction. I have placed my itineray inside my luggage, but I will now place a copy in the outside pocket as well.

Good grief.

:eek::D