Tag Archives for checked baggage.
Chicago-based photographer named Alex Garcia was traveling back from Havana and overnighted in Miami on Thursday. After waiting for hours to clear passport control he headed to the baggage carousel for his luggage, but he couldn’t find his bag.
He’d placed an AirTag in it, and he knew that it left the airport. Police there were uninterested. So he decided to chase it down himself.
There’s two kinds of luggage, carry on and lost. That’s especially true at American Airlines, but they’re doing something about it.
An American Airlines passenger needed to get travel for work, and work involved using an empty bucket. He had to be at work before stores opened the next morning. And that meant he’d have to bring the bucket with him on his flight. So he brought it along as checked luggage. The bucket made it!
As airlines work through the backlog of lost bags, not everyone on staff is well-incentivized to reunite people with their luggage. Instead they may just be expected to clear the backlog. And what is the quickest, easiest way for an employee to do that – an employee who doesn’t see the customer?
The airline, which generally mishandles more bags than competitors, is making process improvements so that bags are more likely to make connections – especially at their Dallas – Fort Worth hub.
At the internal company ‘state of the airline’ meeting after Thursday’s earnings call (a recording of which was reviewed by View From The Wing), Chief Operating Officer David Seymour argued that it doesn’t make sense to upgrade baggage tracking technology until their airline partners have done so first. And CEO Robert Isom says that lagging technology at some of their hubs makes it harder to do so.
Alaska Airlines is introducing permanent luggage tags you can affix to your bags that speed up the check-in process. Passengers with these tags won’t have to print bag tags at the airport. Instead they will “activate the devices from anywhere—their home, office or even car—up to 24-hours before their flight through [Alaska’s] mobile app.”
It’s long been said that there’s only two kinds of luggage, carry on and lost – and airlines don’t yet even have to refund checked bag fees for luggage that’s lost (though the Biden administration wants to change this).
Banning carry on bags might save several minutes during boarding and deplaning, only to cause even greater delays at the baggage belt.
American has now aligned self-service check-in machines to have the same cut-off times as the system agents use at the counter.
However there are still times when you’ll need to see an agent to take advantage of an exception.
Luggage shipping services haven’t ever really seemed quite ready to go mainstream even though they’ve been around for many years. However a Shark Tank contestant company pitches that you save both time and money shipping with them. Here’s the math, how it works, and the risks involved.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
