Heathrow

[BlerkOne]

So given the limits on passengers at LHR, has the baggage situation gotten better, worse, or about the same?

 

We should have some sort of priority labels on our suitcases. Does that just mean they lose it faster? I will have a couple of different trackers in each case.

 

Thank you.

[fbgd]

9 hours ago, BlerkOne said:

We should have some sort of priority labels on our suitcases.

 

Depends on the airline. Some airlines attempt "Priority" handling by just sticking a bright coloured tag on the bag and it serves no purpose, hence the air quotes. 

 

Even on the very best carriers Priority handling sometimes goes astray.

[Globaliser]

10 hours ago, BlerkOne said:

We should have some sort of priority labels on our suitcases. Does that just mean they lose it faster?

 

Priority labelling (however it is done) is more often relevant to the departure airport (or the last departure airport if you're connecting). These days, it's often more than anything to do with sending priority bags to the cans that are intended to be unloaded first at the arrival airport. (The priority labelling is sometimes actually only done via the barcode, if the sorting is completely automated - at these airports, the priority tags themselves really only exist to stop people with a sense of entitlement from asking for a priority tag to be put on.)

 

But once the aircraft reaches the arrival airport, the airline's interest is usually to get as many bags onto the belt as quickly as possible, regardless of whether the priority cans were loaded in the correct place.

 

AIUI, if a bag gets mishandled it'll usually be because it got sent to the wrong aircraft at the departure airport. Sometimes a bag will go walkies at the arrival airport if it ends up in the transfer bag stream instead of being put onto the belt - but otherwise there aren't many chances for the bag to get mishandled there. The big baggage delivery delays recently have generally been because there's been no capacity to unload entire cans or entire flights, not because an individual bag has been mishandled.

[jollyjones]

 

And it used to be the case landing at Bermuda airport (not sure what happens at the new airport, I never check bags anymore) that the priority tagged bags were usually last to come out on the carousel. Not sure if that meant they'd been loaded first and were further inside the cargo hold so were unloaded last, certainly felt like it!