Tag Archives for checked bags.
Southwest Airlines is going to start confiscating passenger bags at the gate on almost every flight once they begin charging for checked bags in two months.
For the first time in company history, Southwest Airlines let go of 1,700 non-union employees at its headquarters. Employees were banned from corporate headquarters and firings took place online.
Now, in addition to major business changes like selling seat assignments and charging for checked bags, the airline is going to be outsourcing its skycap service.
With Alaska eliminating check-in kiosks and telling customers to print their bag tags at home, these would be a great step towards the future – if they could get the cost down (or subsidize them for regular flyers).
Often gratuitous bag checking – the can of beer, the loose deoderant – is done by passengers taking advantage of their free baggage allowance. Of course, just because you can doesn’t mean you should! But who’s in for showing up at an American Airlines ticket counter, insisting on checking 5 liters of water for free?
If I’m checking a bag, I rarely bother checking in online in advance. It just doesn’t save any time. Airline processes are just too cumbersome. There are some airlines in the world that have a ‘just drop the bag and go’ process, but most do not. It really shouldn’t be that hard.
American Airlines has finally made a simple improvement to their bag check process that’s actually a nice time-saver. When you check in online, and opt during that check-in process to check bags, customers can walk up to a kiosk and go right to ‘print bag tags’ rather than walking through a repeat of all of the steps.
American Airlines used to offer curbside check-in. It still exists at some airports, but it now costs a separate fee for each bag. They got rid of the sky caps who used to do the job, and now it’s a low wage separate entity providing the service at most airports where it remains available.
Southwest Airlines is beginning redeye flights. They’re working on premium seating and assigned seats. They’ve been slow in most of their new efforts, and are being dragged into change faster by an activist investor. But some of what’s under consideration could do real damage to the Southwest brand and the multiples that their stock has been able to achieve – and alienate customers who are fanatically loyal.
Since current US Airways management took over, standby policies have been broken. They’ve been more focused on making sure customers don’t get a good deal with standby, potentially saving money, than on making sure customers get where they’re going. And they’re far less generous than Delta and United here.
American is encouraging customers to prepay for bags with a discount (of course you may wind up prepaying bags and then not checking as many – overpaying for your bags)
Another way they’re encouraging this is speeding up bag drop for prepaid bags. You can just scan your boarding pass and out will pop the bag tags. Much faster than the current process!
When asked about an upcoming elimination of the checked baggage guarantee, a Delta Air Lines spokesperson responded simply, “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!”)
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 »
