International delayed luggage

[RooFlyer]

I had an experience last year with bag missing a connection in LAX, bound for SYD (notwithstanding +2hrs connection period) and, for various reasons I followed it up with a friendly senior Qantas management chap, asking specifically why certain things happened or didn't happen. Don't worry, I accept that with lots of flying, delayed bags are an inevitable consequence and being in-bound to Oz, it wasn't the end of the world. But never-the-less I did follow-up, constructively, and QF bloke said that he learned quite a bit too . Everyone came out of this one ahead.

Anyway, just for info here are a few things that were relyed to me from senior-ish QF baggage people (all very abbreviated here):

Q: Why not tell say, WP or WP1 pax via message to flight before destination arrival that bag not able to be collected, rather than in arrival hall at end of bags arrival process, as in my case? This would save fruitless waiting.
A: Advice is sent to arrival port. QF there should page passenger in bag collection area ASAP.

Q: Why do QF baggage groundstaff in different ports (eg SYD arrival and my end destination) and QF staff on 'delayed baggage' phone line give conflicting info? (In my case I was told 'bags are lost, we are searching' and 'bags didn't make connection, they will be on next flight' and then 'bags have arrived, on their way to you' - when they were not).
A: QF system should be telling them the same info to tell me. Maybe differing experience people interpreted info differently. The 'Baggage tracking' web site is the same as many airlines use for tracking luggage and is notoriously ambiguous, not updated properly and fundamentally not much use at all. (I had gathered that much from previous experiences )

Q: Why couldn't QF baggage people give me a reliable time, and in the end, gave conflicting times of when my bags would arrive SYD (that is, they didn't appear to know the bags were on a particular flight - or said that they were, when they weren't).
This was the key finding-out for me
A: Arrival port does not know when a particular delayed bag will arrive until it clears Customs at arriving port and QF collect it. That is, although there is advice from sending port that "this bag" (by any ID method) is scheduled on "this flight", it may not be, for a variety of reasons. Therefore to use QF's exact words to me "we all hold our breath until they have cleared Customs" So for all intents and purposes, a delayed bag goes into a black box at the delayed end and the first thing QF can really tell you about its progress home is when it clears customs at the arrival port.
In my case, I was told several times that my delayed bag was on a certain flight, then arrived on that flight but awaiting customs clearance. It was not.

Anyway, I learned a bit and hopefully some people here will learn a bit also.

No doubt others have had different (and hopefully, more definitive) experiences!

 

[serfty]

Thanks for the post - interesting about the "Black" bit.

 

[kazhere]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. Brings back memories of delayed luggage into SF and not getting to wear a cute outfit to the Black Eyed Peas concert that night. Oh, the tragedy

 

[ajw373]

Q: Why not tell say, WP or WP1 pax via message to flight before destination arrival that bag not able to be collected, rather than in arrival hall at end of bags arrival process, as in my case? This would save fruitless waiting.
A: Advice is sent to arrival port. QF there should page passenger in bag collection area ASAP.

Why just QP or WP1 passengers? If they know your bag didn't make it why not everyone?

Q: Why do QF baggage groundstaff in different ports (eg SYD arrival and my end destination) and QF staff on 'delayed baggage' phone line give conflicting info? (In my case I was told 'bags are lost, we are searching' and 'bags didn't make connection, they will be on next flight' and then 'bags have arrived, on their way to you' - when they were not).
A: QF system should be telling them the same info to tell me. Maybe differing experience people interpreted info differently. The 'Baggage tracking' web site is the same as many airlines use for tracking luggage and is notoriously ambiguous, not updated properly and fundamentally not much use at all. (I had gathered that much from previous experiences )

The problem is the system they use to track bags (lost or otherwise) on international flights is not a Qantas system it is more or less the same system that you look at to track your bags. The info that Qantas has will be pretty much the same info as you have. Why the conflicting info, my guess is different people are interpreting what the system is saying rather than trying to misslead or lie to you.

 

[elbarto]

Why should the text message be limited to Platinums?

 

[Kangol]

Why should the text message be limited to Platinums?

To make the CLs jealous?

 

[RooFlyer]

<snip>
The problem is the system they use to track bags (lost or otherwise) on international flights is not a Qantas system it is more or less the same system that you look at to track your bags. The info that Qantas has will be pretty much the same info as you have. Why the conflicting info, my guess is different people are interpreting what the system is saying rather than trying to misslead or lie to you.

The system used to report the tracking of bags (on the internet) is useless, but I understood that its not the same as the QF people have in front of them when they talk to you on the phone. Indeed when QF did sort things out, (ie when the bags actually did clear customs) and they phoned me, the info was much more precise than I saw on the web page at the same time.

I very much hope that QF have more info than I have, given I'm at home twiddling my thumbs and they are at various airports, hopefully in possession of my bag, even if the reporting system doesn't know it at the time!

I was very careful not to say, or tried not to give the impression that QF was 'lying' to me. However they did mislead me, unintentionally (saying for instance the bag was in such-and-such a place when we later found that it wasn't.)

Why should the text message be limited to Platinums?

Not sure what you are referring to with 'text'. If you mean advice re delayed bags while still on the long haul flight, that presumably would be relayed in person by one of the FAs, after advice to the flight like they do with gate connections etc. By all means apply to all concerned pax; I used the word "say" in the original post to mean 'as an example'.

 

[ajw373]

I very much hope that QF have more info than I have, given I'm at home twiddling my thumbs and they are at various airports, hopefully in possession of my bag, even if the reporting system doesn't know it at the time!

As I said (not sure if just international or if it includes domestic) baggage lost or otherwise is tracked by a different system that is not owned or run by Qantas. It is thanks to this system that we have interlining etc. When a bag is lost the amount of info in that system is minimal. Now will give you an example during an Air France strike a few years back I managed to get to London but my bag stayed in Paris. Air France knew full well where the bag was, but the computer system for a good 3 days showed the bag as missing, along with 100,000+ other bags. The issue was down to processing the bag, unil it was recorded as lost it couldn't be returned, the "search" was initiated by the ground handling company at Heathrow who sent a message to the last know location (Brest) who then had to pass onto Paris. They then had to process my claim along with the all the other claims, all the while the bag was officially lost, but everyone knew where it was. On arrival in Heathrow there was the same issue. People knew where the bag was, but until processed the computer system showed in transit, for another 3 days.

So whilst the interface the airline has may be different to what we see, the information is pretty much the same. This is for all airlines and is not unique to Qantas.