Delta appears to be eliminating its checked baggage delivery guarantee (“Bags on Time”) program next month.
Customers could claim 2,500 miles whenever their bags failed to show up on the carousel within 20 minutes of arrival on a domestic flight. You could request the miles on your phone while standing at baggage claim, and in my experience claims were approved instantly.
When asked about an upcoming elimination of the checked baggage guarantee, a Delta Air Lines spokesperson wouldn’t deny it and only offered, “We have not made any announcement about a change to our program.” (I said in response, “well, if you’d made an announcement I wouldn’t be asking!”)
The person who shared this with me attributed it to the high cost of the program driven by awareness in viral TikTok videos and increasing ‘gaming’ of compensation.
@ecommjess How to get miles if your bags are late! What’s your LEAST favorite airline? #vacation #flights #pointsandmiles ♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys – Kevin MacLeod & Kevin The Monkey
@erikakullberg What Delta doesn’t want you to know about delayed bags #lawyer #travel #money ♬ original sound – Money Lawyer Erika
However awareness always seemed high at baggage claim when Delta literally advertised it there:
In July 2009 Alaska Airlines introduced a Baggage Service Guarantee, offering miles or a discount on a future flight if bags took more than 25 minutes to arrive. A year later they reduced that to 20 minutes. (Oddly, Alaska’s website claims that their baggage guarantee was introduced in 2010, but that is not accurate.)
Delta, which competes directly with Alaska in Seattle, followed Alaska with its delivery commitment. Anecdotally passengers tell me they’ve been able to claim Delta’s guarantee more frequently than pre-pandemic. And Delta made it far easier to claim than Alaska – you actually have to go to Alaska’s baggage office within 2 hours of arrival to claim their miles or future discount. So the expected move may be a function of both Delta not being good enough at baggage delivery, and making compensation claims too easy to file.
Southwest (which includes checked bags with its fares), United, JetBlue and American do not offer any checked baggage delivery guarantees – which is unfortunate as bag fees rise. It would be nice to expect a performance standard at a cost that can now be as high as $45 for first checked bag.
I think the real reason is that they simply could not honor their promise of getting your checked bags to you within 20 and as a result they were having to give out way too many 2500 SkyMiles payments. i.e They failed. I’ve notice over the past year that my bags almost never came to me on the carousel within 20 minutes. (I fly DL 20+ times a year and always check my bags.) They stopped the program, because they could not perform what they promised.
@Don … +1 . Yep , they cannot perform .
It really was a great attempt by delta to provide elevated service but a tad funny that it’s supposedly canceled since realized delta couldn’t deliver on a guarantee.
Delta runs a great operation but they’ve long gamed the baggage game. Their MBR is low but only relatively so because they don’t have to report a mishandled bag if they tell the customer it’s lost first. Which is obviously kind of dumb. A lost bag is a lost bag but it’s how the DOT reporting works. Any airline could do the same but delta built a tech system to make their mishandled bags artificially low given how DOT reports lost bags and the rules there. But… for a company that has made such a marketing thing out of gaming the DOT reporting system, it’s hard not to have a little schadenfreude if they do indeed get rid of the “guarantee” due to expense.
This could be a new record for Tim Dunn blasts, Gary 😉
I’ll bet the Timmy ChatGPT writer is on overdrive. My Timmy bingo board is ready! Extra points if you somehow work the a350 superiority and delta’s aims of pacific domination into a chat on baggage claim. I know you can do it.
“…attributed it to the high cost of the program driven by awareness in viral TikTok videos and increasing ‘gaming’ of compensation.”
‘Gaming’ the system – this isn’t exploiting or manipulating the rules to one’s advantage. Delta advertised this reimbursement as a benefit for flying Delta. I don’t see how this could be considered trying to get something from Delta that isn’t offered nor deserved.
I know people always say “I’ll never fly [airline] again,” but I literally will not fly AA into Washington Dulles after 3 (!) instances where it took over an hour for bags to reach baggage claim. I’ve flown DL and UA with similar late-evening arrival times, and the bags were out almost instantly. Even poor little Allegiant got my bag out fairly quickly the one time I flew them.
Once at DCA I got the DL miles. ♂️
Charge more (for bags) for less(-er) service. A form of inflation undercounting and the harm done by all waivers and favors granted by governments to airlines when allowing them to combine and collude and signal too much and easily.
You should PAY Delta an additional $45 if your bags aren’t out in 20 minutes, just for the honor of flying the universe’s #1 PREMIUM airline!
some people clearly are working overtime to distort facts.
The DOT doesn’t track 20 minutes to claim but it does track overall baggage performance and Delta consistently is at the top of the industry – as they are for most stats. In the latest DOT report, Allegiant was the only airline that had a better lost baggage record than DL. Given that the ultra low cost carriers don’t even make connections or fly longhaul interline itineraries, the fact that DL’s baggage handling outperforms most the industry – including AA, DL and WN – as well as AS – means DL has made the point. AA consistently has the worst baggage handling in the industry – and it is in AA competitive markets where DL has made the greatest inroads. Baggage handling is only one part of DL’s success in winning over customers AA once carried.
A big reason is that DL made the process of claiming compensation easy but there are clearly ways to game the system. AS made a process that requires an employee – which makes it costly to administer.
And the real reason is that business travelers often don’t check bags, that is who Delta pursues and carries far more than any other airline, and it is leisure travelers that game the system.
And the real question will be if Delta raises checked bag fees. IF all they do is remove their baggage delivery guarantee, then they will gain far more revenue from leisure customers that find DL becomes a cheaper alternative than AA and UA.
@Tim Dunn … Why does an employee make it costly to administer ? ( second paragraph ) How would anything be administered otherwise ?
Tim, read what I wrote. This is becoming a very common trend for you to not read. There’s a difference between my section about DOT mishandled bag reporting and Delta’s 20 minute guarantee. But they are both baggage-related and Delta is known in the industry for gaming the DOT reporting methodology to get articially low bags. Of course Allegiant is going to have low mishandled bags. They don’t connect passengers.
And before you get too gleeful about these supposed Delta roads against AA, you should probably go look at nearly any market share at any airport in the SouthEast. AA is the carrier making inroads in important markets, not Delta. Delta is just trying to grow in places where they have no ability to significantly grow like LAX and SEA where they’re still below oneworld market share at each airport.
minibrain,
it is YOU that can’t read. I specifically noted that the DOT doesn’t track 20 minute performance.
Second, as I fully expected, you go ape sh** when I accurately point out that DL not only manages to get its planes to the gate more on-time than AA UA WN AND AS even in SEA but DL also mishandles fewer bags – which is irrespective of a 20 minute guarantee.
The chances of having a bag mishandled on AA are more than TWICE as high on AA as on DL – or WN for that matter.
and, once again, you invent your own reality because you can’t accept that DL is the larger airline compared to AA in just about every market in the SE EXCEPT for CLT and MIA.
You simply cycle through a pre-selected assortment of lies and we have to live through your distortion that AA is larger in the SE. There have been worse so we should be thankful.
and the real issue is that you are no longer arguing because everyone knows it to be fact that DL has handledly overtaken AA in NYC, BOS and LAX and now, also, AUS.
How on earth can one game the system? Eligibility is determined automatically (once passenger submits request) based on the timestamps from each bag scan in Delta’s own systems.
Admittedly, if I am checking multiple bags, I will attach one to each passenger on the reservation rather than put them all under my name, so that in the event of a delay we all get miles. (The miles are awarded once per occurrence per passenger, not per bag.)
and once again, Gary states as FACT something that has not been confirmed.
May happen and may not but AA and UA HAVE raised baggage charges.
and MAX et all go nuts berating Delta for a service that AA and UA and WN for that matter never could offer and never did.
alert,
if you don’t understand that a human has to be paid and an automated timestamp allows automated handling and much lower if any cost to administer, I can’t help you.
AS built and still uses a costly means to administer this.
And if DL drops it, I wouldn’t be surprised if AS does the same.
There is no competitive advantage to either AS or DL if both do it. There is no advantage to AS if DL carries a different group of passengers and DL has already established its loyalty in SEA which is independent of baggage delivery guarantees.
Sorry how exactly do you “game” the system?
They know what flight you were on and they know when the bags came out.
Sounds like “game” actually means “use.”
@Mark: When Gary said “game the system”, what he really meant was guessing that Delta might be pulling the program because the guarantee had become TOO popularized on social media, so that instead of people who were actually making ticket purchasing decisions on the 20 minute guarantee making claims, “everyone” with social media was diligently counting the minutes from arrival and filing claims at 21 minutes, maybe even before they were at bag claim themselves.
And once again Tim resorts to name calling. Grow up.
Can anyone prove that Tim Dunn is *not* a basement-dwelling incel?
@Tim: A program administered by an employee may or may not be more expensive than one that is automatically administered, if the manual program reduces the number of attempted claims.
Since SkyMiles have such low value, it probably doesn’t make sense to pay an employee to be a gatekeeper against 2500 SkyMiles claims. For Alaska, if 75 percent of eligible passengers don’t bother making the claim because it involves shlepping over to the bag claim office and waiting in line rather than just making a claim on their phone on the rental car shuttle / in the uber, that might be worth paying the bag claim employee to process the other 25 percent.
@Scudder: Tim Dunn is the most premium basement dwelling incel in the most premium basement.
@MaxPower: Honest question, how does delta game the baggage reporting? Not saying they don’t, I’m just not quite able to put together the method.
Tim already hit a few of my bingo squares! “Minibrain” was a tough one to get, but he did it! I only wish he could read what I write or work on reading comprehension… but alas, he doesn’t get DOT reporting and how Delta games the system to have relatively low MBR scores as reported by the DOT and also, apparently, hasn’t been looking at SE airport market share lately. 😉
Tough day for you, Tim. But I do have to get a grin from Gary on this one. He sure knows how to ruin your day and get you to spend an entire morning going nutzo over something you can’t even control lol. Thanks for the entertainment, Tim. You never disappoint.
–MaxPower (minibrain if you’re nasty)
Also, Pro tip: Lounge access is available on arrival, so I usually stop at the lounge for some snacks on my way out of the airport, which dramatically increases the chances my bag is at bag claim when I get there. Much rather spend a few minutes grabbing refreshments than standing in a barren baggage claim populated with overpricedvending machines and maybe an overpriced coffee stand while staring at a bag claim belt.
If Delta really wanted to make waves, they’d refund or credit checked bag fees for any bags that don’t make it to the destination on time. I don’t understand how they get away with that. I pay for a checked bag, but it doesn’t arrive with me on the flights I travel on.
I love it when I get accused of name-calling by people that use and mock my name and by people that invent their own reality instead of deal w/ facts.
we have a RUMOR of the end of a program – no confirmation.
None of AA, WN or UA could even offer this program. Their baggage handling performance for LOST bags is worse than DL’s.
And, btw, AS’ mishandled baggage rate is just above DL’s. They don’t have to worry about awarding miles for late bags because they take claims for lost baggage instead.
Let’s see what happens not just w/ the bag guarantee but also bag fees.
The bag guarantee is being used much more by leisure travelers than by business passengers. DL already wins over both categories by overall far better operational performance.
and, yes, Max, DL has a very strong track record of growing in AA strength markets and they aren’t finished, including in the SE.
@Christopher Raehl: I do that all the time but I’m terrible at it…lol. I duck into the Sky Club for a quick drink and snack on my way to Bag Claim.
Unfortunately, I then start worrying about the distance to the Bag Claim (in an unfamiliar airport) or that my bag is going around and around and then maybe someone thinks it’s their bag and…well, you get the picture.
Hey Chris R,
Like I mentioned, any airline could do it. It’s not like they’re breaking a rule, but Delta was the first to do it well and put technology in the system for it. The short/simple version is you don’t have to report lost/mishandled baggage to DOT if you tell your customer you lost their bag before they contact you about their lost bag.
At a high level, delta has a system that reaches out to customers if a bag is lost or mishandled or is likely to be. In theory, it’s actually kind of amazing Delta has any MBR numbers but, I guess, in theory some customers may reach out with concern about a lost bag and Delta would have to report that mishandled bag to DOT if the customer ends up being correct about a mishandled bag. But, so long as Delta’s system can automatically detect as soon as a bag is about to be lost or miss a connection and delta reaches out to a customer before they customers reaches out to Delta about the lost bag, then it doesn’t get reported to DOT. That’s a very simplified explanation but that’s the basic version of how Delta games the DOT MBR system but then uses that gaming to market an operational performance metric that isn’t entirely true. They have lost/mishandled more bags than the DOT reporting would suggest, they just don’t have to report them all.
Like I said, any airline could do the same, but Delta was a first mover in this gaming the MBR system and certainly is the most proactive about keeping the illusion of a “lower than actual reality” MBR score as reported by the DOT.
Doesn’t discount that Delta generally runs a good operation, they do, and generally are slightly better than their competition (at least before the pandemic, not as much lately) but… they’re also experts at marketing operational metrics to customers that don’t understand the metrics and those metrics aren’t exactly comparing apples to apples like gaming the MBR system for years.
Tik tokers are the worst people on the planet. Please stop inserting their content here, you’re just funding and encouraging these narcissistic sociopaths.
Delta should implement a tiered guarantee. 20m is unlikely at many airports. Make a few tiers of airports where the guarantee is 20m, 30m, or 40m. You should be trying to guarantee against extreme outlier outcomes, not above average outcomes.
Live in your own fantasy, Timmy. 🙂 You clearly haven’t looked at much market share data in the SE over the last few years. You’d have to be blind to miss the shift in share outside ATL, but… I don’t think you’ve ever cared about reality when it doesn’t make Delta look amazing.
I have work to do. You have a good time in the comments section today.
Delta employs premium gorillas to toss luggage onto the tarmac.
This is (unfortunately) not captured in DOT stats.
I know it’s just more anecdotal evidence, but I definitely saw a huge increase in redemptions for this after the pandemic. It used to be that I would only consistently get it at my home airport(leading me to even start checking my carry-on for return flights just to get the free points). After the pandemic I was regularly getting redemptions in BWI, DEN, DTW, LAX, ONT, and on and on. I got over 50,000 SkyMiles from it last year when my record prior to the pandemic was maybe 20,000.
It is rather annoying that their response to this is “let’s take away the apology,” and not “let’s figure out why we can’t get bags to the carousel on time anymore.”
On my last Delta trip, *everyone* could have claimed the guarantee on my outbound as not a single bag had reached the carousel within 20 minutes. I don’t know how many others did, but there was a sign in the claim area advertising it so Delta has only themselves to blame for the funny-money “cost”.
(On the return nobody could claim it because, due to jetbridge issues, the bags got to the carousel well within the deadline; bags were on their way before the boarding door opened, and there’s no guarantee for how soon the *passengers* get off the plane. I blame the airport, rather than the airline,for that delay.)
Is Tim Dunn hooking up with Ed Bastian or something? Otherwise there’s no way that’s a real person.
Two weeks ago at JFK, I went to the JetBlue baggage office after I had been waiting a long time for my luggage to arrive (a flight that landed 20 minutes later delivered bags to the carousel before my flight so I was wondering what had happened) and the agent told me that their standard was 45 minutes to an hour so I needed to be patient.
“you actually have to go to Alaska’s baggage office within 2 hours of arrival to claim their miles or future discount”
No.
Call Alaska and say “long line” or “couldn’t find the bag office”. I’ve done this for arrivals in PDX, SEA, LAX, SAN, and others.
“Allegiant was the only airline that had a better lost baggage record than DL”
One can interpret “better” as “more luggage lost”. That would be nothing to boast about.
LOL
I love this program!
And I’m pretty sure DL will either cancel or seriously curtail it – I know, I get more miles from DL due to this program, year after year, than I receive for flying. And I’m not the only one.
Will Tim Dunn ever shut up? I can’t think of more obnoxious or disliked commenter on any board.
All of you can stop attacking my daddy…you are all wrong…he is always right! Facts are irrelevant to your arguing with him. He doesn’t need statistics to back up his factual claims!
Anecdotally, from my own experience, DL baggage delivery within 20 min post pandemic has noticeably slipped. I’m a DL Platinum Medallion and have applied and received the mileage guarantee several times. Methinks they no longer can meet the 20 min goal consistently. As to “gaming” the system, I find that hard to believe as I always check flight arrival time against bag delivery time record before applying/receiving the guarantee.
When MAX and his stupid counterparts leave me out of the conversation, I might think twice about participating.
But he jumped in here before I ever did, used my name, followed by a half dozen fake name imposters.
If you think I am not going to take every opportunity to blast AA and UA – which is where those fankids have their allegiance – you have another think coming as long as that scum infests the internet.
MAX,
Delta is simply the largest in the SE. AA has built strong hubs at CLT and DFW but that is 80% of their domestic system. DL has real hubs in NYC and LAX, two hubs where AA chose to outsource its flying to “partners.” The rest of AA and DL’s hubs are medium-sized where DL uses a higher percentage of mainline aircraft including in the SE. It is beyond delusional to even attempt to argue something that everyone knows – that AA is somehow bigger in the SE.
And the bigger point about the SE is that UA faces a very uphill climb to grow its presence there precisely because of DL and AA’s presence – which they will not cede.
as for gaming, you mean the same “gaming” that AA now does by never cancelling flights but delaying them overnight? Exactly what you made hay about several years ago that Delta did.
If AA (and UA) haven’t figured out how to run a better operation and do their own “gaming,” WTH have they been doing for the last 45 years of US domestic airline deregulation?
And the “gaming” that AA and UA both did and got caught at is not using their slots in NYC. The result was that EWR lost slot controlled status and is now smaller because UA can’t run the size of operation it wanted. And the whole genesis of the NEA was AA’s attempt to hold onto slots which it didn’t use at LGA and JFK all the way back to 2018 and before. They concocted a plan with B6 to play slot bingo but did so in a way that violated antitrust laws and the NEA went bye-bye.
If any two airlines have tried more unsuccessfully to game anything, it is AA and UA.
you go do what you need to do. Come back when you have facts instead of your childish mud-slinging.
And if you want to participate in the conversation, then don’t use my name or allow any of your friends to do it either.
Why do you people continue to engage with sad little blowhard Timmy? You’re just encouraging him. When I see a wall of text written by him I keep scrolling.
mantis,
you made sense in your first response and you were even more astute the second time.
The mental midgets are driven by a childish inability to accept industry facts and so they turn the comments section into a free for all and none of it changes that AA and UA still underperform DL which is what they really can’t stand to admit.
Short of Gary blocking IP addresses, the best solution is to call out, not ignore, these social defects.
SEA alone was probably dragging them under.
I rarely get bags within 20 min at SEA, but only recall making the DL online claim twice – when they were 45 minutes or more.
Alaska requires in-person claims, I only did that once, 50 minutes in, just not worth the time. Did the claim, then bags finally started coming out.
Let’s face it, Delta is just an increasingly crappy airline that doesn’t care about passengers in the least. It’s not like that’s any kind of surprise.
I used to work as a CS agent. One of the jobs I loved was baggage service, there was never a dull moment. The high drama, to the inane questions asked 30 times in a 5 minute period – over & over. But my most memorable were the times you be assisting a passenger with a missing/delayed bag report in an office. Someone approached the threshold hold – not entering – and screamed, “I know your C.E.O. personally and I’m going to tell him/her about the lousy CS.” They stormed away and got lost in the crowd. You barely had time to look up from your screen, or to change your eye position from the customer you were assisting. We had comment cards, we had authority to issue vouchers for any inconveniences, we had tools that we could use to elevate their immediate distress. What we didn’t have is time to chase them down and apologize. The comment made, “I’ll never fly your airline again” doesn’t happen as frequently as you think. I’m going out on a limb… but maybe 5 times over a 35+ year career. Hardly memorable.
Baggage service was the armpit of the airline. We didn’t start getting really reliable and advance bag tracing until 2014. Now several airlines have tracing available on their apps. I no longer work, but I can imagine the job still has its share of these incidents, but at least you already know if your bag is going to arrive before you go to the claim area.
20 minutes….i had not seen this guarantee. That’s laughable. I think if I were to ask what I thought was acceptable compensation-I’d go with doubling the $$MQD/PQP$$ – it would certainly get me to check a bag.
“The chances of having a bag mishandled on AA are more than TWICE as high on AA as on DL – or WN for that matter.”
I would imagine it is near impossible to have a bag mishandled on AA if I’m flying on DL. Tim did say “more than TWICE”.
As always, Tom is 100% correct in his assessment of Delta being superior. At least in the metric category of DL mishandling less bags checked on AA than AA mishandling bags checked on AA.
I would be happy if my Sky priority tagged bag wasn’t one of the last 10 off the plane. Literally a full 350 and mine was in the last 10. Has happened more than once. I claimed the mikes a few times but finally quit. My last fight a few weeks ago was almost an hour. But the flight was 3 hours late waiting on a replacement pilot. In Atlanta of all places. I realized with the 2,500 miles you could probably only get a couple extra ice cubes at the lounge anyway.
“Delta literally advertised it there”
As opposed to what? Figuratively advertising it there?
Pathetic.
@Joel – It’s sorely tempting to become the grammar police at times but using the word literally – where true – is fairly common when emphasizing a point.