Are Ground Handlers Gaming Baggage Delivery KPIs?

Bangkok airport baggage claim
Airport ground handling companies often seem keen to get the first bag on the belt quickly… but not so much the rest. Photo: Matt Graham.

If you fly often with checked baggage, you’ve probably spent many hours of your life waiting at baggage carousels for your suitcase to appear.

Running an airline is hugely expensive, and delays cost big money, so airlines put a lot of effort into making sure their operations run like clockwork. They try to get planes out on time, as much as possible, and hold everyone working at the airport accountable for this.

Baggage handlers are no exception. Airlines expect that bags will be loaded onto aircraft quickly, to avoid delaying the flight. They also measure the time it takes for customers to receive their checked bags on the carousel after landing.

Why airlines collect data on baggage delivery times

Many airports and airlines provide status updates to customers waiting to retrieve their checked luggage. Often, for example, you’ll find updates like “first bags arriving” or “last bag arrived” on the airport information displays.

Baggage claim at KLIA2
Many airports provide information about baggage delivery status on the information screens. Photo: Matt Graham.

At some airports, you might even see more detailed information like “first bags in 8 minutes”. Some airlines also provide this information to customers via their smartphone apps.

Airlines aren’t just collecting information about baggage delivery timings to keep customers updated. They also collect this data in order to track the performance of their baggage handlers.

Increasingly, these ground staff are outsourced and working for a third-party company. The ground handling companies likely have service level agreements, targets and/or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that they need to meet.

Are ground handling companies gaming the system?

One of the important KPIs for airport baggage handlers is the time it takes them to get the first bags from each flight onto the belt. But all that the airline is really measuring here is the time it takes to get the first bag out – not (for example) the first 10%, 25% or 50% of bags.

Many frequent flyers will also tell you that airlines don’t really seem to care if the priority-tagged bags come out first or not. In my own experience, priority baggage works less than 50% of the time. But that’s a story for another time!

Star Alliance priority bag tag
Priority baggage is a nice benefit for elite status and premium cabin passengers… when it works. Photo: Matt Graham.

On countless occasions, I can recall the first bag appearing on the carousel quite quickly. At this point, the information display would show that the bags for my flight have started to arrive. But there would literally only be one – or perhaps a small handful – of bags delivered at this point. Often, they would be crew bags. The rest of the bags may not start appearing for another five, 10, 20 or even 30 minutes.

Once, flying into Munich on Air China, literally four bags had been delivered by the time the airport information display said “all bags delivered”. In reality, it took an entire hour for the rest of the bags to appear.

Why this might be a problem

As a passenger, this is frustrating because the information you’re receiving is incorrect and potentially even misleading. Airlines might also not be getting the full picture of the service their contracted ground handler is providing.

Of course, I have no evidence that ground handling companies are deliberately doing this to try to artificially inflate their KPIs. This is just a theory I have after taking many hundreds of flights with checked baggage.

To be fair, even if baggage handlers were trying to cheat the system, I wouldn’t blame them. They work incredibly hard in a job that is quite physically demanding. Baggage delays are usually due to a lack of staff or a lot of flights arriving at the same time – not lazy handlers!

United baggage handlers loading luggage
Baggage handlers work hard. Photo: Calle Macarone on Unsplash.

Has anyone else noticed this trend of one or two bags arriving on the carousel quickly, then the rest taking an age? Or am I just imagining things? You can share your thoughts on the AFF forum!

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.
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I have not seen this.

I have seen maybe a full containers worth or (from a B737 flight) maybe a tow motor and carriage worth of bags, so say between 30-50 bags, before a break in delivery.
As an aside what is the correct name for those things that smaller aircraft and 737s get loaded from / unloaded onto?
These:

View image at the forums

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Has anyone else noticed this trend of one or two bags arriving on the carousel quickly, then the rest taking an age?

As it happens, I noticed this on a couple of flights in my recent RTW; they were large airports (one from memory was DFW) . Just 2-4 bags come out, then nothing. Maybe another couple a minute later. I wondered - how does that happen, thinking of delivery by carriages, per photo above? Only thing I could think of was if there was sort of large baggage-handling system behind the scenes, with conveyors etc, there was some priority given to other bags, just after the delivery of my flights occurred. 🤷‍♂️

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One of the biggest delays at a hub is transit bags often get higher treatment as it’s much easier to delay bags for passengers ending at that airport but if bags transiting elsewhere are delayed then they may miss the flight.

Some airports/countries like Indonesia (as just one example) X-ray all luggage prior to it arriving on the luggage carrousel which in itself can slow things down as bags with restricted/ prohibited items need to be pulled aside and are then tagged with things like zip ties, tape or in some airports a security tag (same sort of thing you’d find in shops) so it can be pulled aside at customs.

I think EVA Air is a notable one as business class luggage is tagged as F1 (noting this is business class only - no *G or other status except EVAs own very top tier members) and it’s to be available within 15 minutes of the door being opened. I guess this is much easier for EVA to deliver as all their aircraft A321 and bigger use containers for luggage whereas something like a 737 makes it more difficult to seperate.

Alaska airlines and Delta also have a 20 minute guarantee (with a discount code or free miles if they fail) for all bags noting that it has to be a domestic flight plus a bunch of other restrictions.

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As an aside what is the correct name for those things that smaller aircraft and 737s get loaded from / unloaded onto?

For containerised operation the containers are carried on "Dollies".

I am not sure of any special name for the carts luggage is carried on for manual loading.

Inside the 737 aircraft they can have "Magic Carpets". These are conveyer belts with a __/ cross section. They are installed inside the cargo sections of aeroplanes and are used to move luggage to the other end of the compartment, rather than the handlers "frog march" it down.

(Generally Airbus aircraft in the region do not need these as even the smaller craft are containerised.)

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Ah, KPIs. What a load of the proverbial. I can see the handlers doing all they can to worsen the KPIs, as any benefit derived from them would go to 'management' and not the workers.

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What's measured is what gets done.

If only one piece of luggage is required to meet the KPIs then that's all that needs to be delivered.

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It is exactly what I experience when flying into Australia from OS. The last trip was the first time I haven't seen it because we were HLO and were through customs before any bags delivered.

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What's measured is what gets done.

If only one piece of luggage is required to meet the KPIs then that's all that needs to be delivered.

I recall management introducing a KPI that 80% of all repair requests needed to be resolved by the end of next working day.

Very soon the KPI was regularly met without exception but customer complaints went through the roof.

Took the blink of an eyelid for staff to work only the easy ones first and if one of the harder ones missed to the target, don’t bother doing the repair at all and leave it in the too hard basket because you wouldn’t get credit for it anyway.

This resulted in a tail of hundreds of jobs that were weeks old but middle managers all getting their bonus.

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Of course! It all makes sense now but I’m with you Matt, those badly paid overworked third party luggage handlers are not the once to blame. It’s rather one of those many negative outcomes of penny pinching and offloading everything possible to dirt cheap third parties.

Priority tagging indeed is a while additional topic and one of my bug bears. As it happens, in my experience Qantas is particularly bad at this. Oh, right, what was that I was saying about penny pinching and third party contractors… 🙄

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Wouldn't the more important metric be time taken for the last bag to arrive?

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