Constant Priority Luggage Issues, Decay Of The VA Experience

[desiredusername]

It's like lotto - you never know when you'll be lucky.

 

[Travel Guru]

I'm WP and I'm at a 90-95% success rate with Priority Bags

TG

 

[ADLFF]

I've been pretty lucky overall. My VA priority tag seems to work a treat!
Last few trips bag has been out in the first 10 or so, Quite often its within the first 5, especially when I have a large Pelican brand hard case containing some of the Drones we use for Motorsport video. Seems they always pop out first!

I can honestly only recall once in the past year that my bags have had any huge wait.. BNE-ADL and it came out close to last, mind you I was pretty late checking in, to the point they were calling me!

Unlike the time QF lost my bags MEL-ADL for a week..... Awkward..

 

[Boof1]

I wouldn't have a clue what my strike rate is as I mainly use carry on to avoid the baggage claim, however I thought I'd share an interesting take on priority luggage with you guys as it's been mentioned that there isn't an actual definition of what priority luggage is.

I had some stuff that I needed to take with me on a domestic trip in a box (about as big as a 30 can slab of beer) last year and as luck would have it the only flight I could get from where I was at the time to where I was going required 3 flights and stops in 2 domestic ports. Sure enough the first flight was delayed and I pretty much walked off my first flight and walked onto the next one. I was almost certain that my box of stuff was left behind but to my surprise at the final destination out popped the box on the belt with a strange looking red and white "expedite baggage" sticker. It had all my details as a WP, the middle connecting flight details and my final destination. Interestingly it also had a replaced bag tag number on this special sticker. In all the trips I've had all over the place I'd never seen one.

If I was to guess, I'd say that my box actually missed the 2nd flight I took and was shifted on a later flight that still arrived with time to connect to my final flight of the day (I did have a bit of a layover between flights 2 & 3).

While I know that we are talking about priority being when you walk off the aircraft your bags are waiting, if I had a choice between first off every time versus what I experienced on this particular trip I'd go with what I had every day of the week.

Cheers,

Boof

 

[Deleted member 29185]

a box (about as big as a 30 can slab of beer)

Were these flights on VA?

PS - I love the way of describing the box size! Who needs a tape measure if you drink beer?

 

[Boof1]

Were these flights on VA?

PS - I love the way of describing the box size! Who needs a tape measure if you drink beer?

Yes the flights sure were on VA, sorry I didn't mention this in the post.

Beer cartons are a great descriptor! They feature in a lot of my conversations when trying to describe size, shapes and weight!

 

[Plutonus]

How many olympic swimming pools would it have filled?

Yes the flights sure were on VA, sorry I didn't mention this in the post.

Beer cartons are a great descriptor! They feature in a lot of my conversations when trying to describe size, shapes and weight!

I never should have posted in this thread. Last two flights since my post have been priority baggage fail

 

[Boof1]

How many olympic swimming pools would it have filled?

If you are using standard 24 can slabs of beer there are 148,320 cartons including the wooden pallets stacked in an Olympic pool (this is based on the pool being 2500 cubic metres, 120 cartons per pallet).

Not sure we would get all of them tagged Priority with VA though!

 

[pythonisman]

out popped the box on the belt with a strange looking red and white "expedite baggage" sticker. It had all my details as a WP, the middle connecting flight details and my final destination. Interestingly it also had a replaced bag tag number on this special sticker. In all the trips I've had all over the place I'd never seen one.

I flew VLI-BNE-SYD in January and had a reasonably tight connection in BNE where I had to pick up my bags, clear customs and then re-check in.
Turned out our flight to SYD was delayed by a fair bit so there wasn't an issue with the connection at all.

When we landed in SYD, waited an eternity watching everyone else's bags (many of which had come from VLI-BNE-SYD) come out. Once the carousel closed ( and I was fuming! ) I walked down to baggage services, and showed my boarding pass to the attendant. Turned out our bags were sitting in the back of that room with the EXPEDITE BAGGAGE sticker on them and what looked like a hand written bag tag.

What I assume happened was that our bags made it on an earlier flight to Sydney (as there was one departing when ours was delayed), so your guess is possibly right.
Unfortunately in my instance our bags didn't make it onto the carousel for our flight!

</random anecdote>

 

[Atleastonce]

My bag came out first on the carousel today. First time ever with VA with 3 years of priority tags and only second time ever with any airline. Feeling lucky today.

 

[goldfishinabowl]

Velocity Gold status, Saturday/Sunday I flew Hanoi-Singapore-Melbourne with Singapore Airlines and then VA to Canberra. Luggage had SQ priority tag. Checked in with VA and it seems that without me noticing it the agent REMOVED my SQ tag and didn't put on a VA one. I would have understood it simply not working as I'm sure it isn't easy to pack and unpack the bags in the right order, but discovering that there was no tag, not even the SQ one, was infuriating!

 

[SimonF]

I read this a while back and thought I'm lucky having had no issues with priority luggage until this weekend. Last flight my bags came out last and two other flights came in the middle. I wonder how I will fair on next flight but clearly the baggage handlers need retraining on how to pack to ensure priority baggage comes out first. I wouldn't want to press this though as they might go on strike.

 

[SimonF]

So what does priority luggage mean? I flew twice this week and both times my "priority " luggage was after those without priority.

 

[jackthomas]

It's a real luck of the draw... Some airports do it great (MEL typically) I've had perhaps 60% luck in Sydney, Last SYD trip my back came out almost last, despite the rest of priority coming out first...
Cairns is hopeless, BNE tends to be pretty good...

 

[SuzieQ68]

So going to add my two bits worth....generally have no issues with the priority baggage (both domestic and international with VA and its partner airlines), usually find that it arrives on the carousel relatively early on, however, the Adelaide baggage handlers really need to get their act together. I don't usually check baggage for domestic trips, but when I need to I would like the fact that I've achieved some form of status with the airline to actually count (especially as I've paid from my own pocket to get to this status). More often than not in Adelaide my checked baggage turns up well after pretty much the majority of passengers have collected theirs. Case in point was last Monday from OOL to ADL. All of the priority baggage came out last - not just mine. "Domestic" blindness maybe?? The bags were clearly marked with the priority tag, so no excuses there. In the big scheme of things happening in the world today, doesn't even rate, but as mentioned earlier, if VA are going to offer 'extras' to status guests, then would have thought this would be something that would be fairly easy to accommodate.

 

[mel-world]

Two points...

Does the success in getting your bag off first rely more on the loaders at the departing or the arriving port? If they are loaded last, there is a good chance they will come off first and VV.

And....

I often have waited longest on transferring flights when my luggage is just put amongst all the bags when going from flight to flight, no matter the transfer time and the prominence of the Priority tag.

 

[SimonF]

So many Asian airlines have no issues ever with this. How can it be that difficult?

 

[bullerdude]

Two points...

Does the success in getting your bag off first rely more on the loaders at the departing or the arriving port? If they are loaded last, there is a good chance they will come off first and VV.

And....

I often have waited longest on transferring flights when my luggage is just put amongst all the bags when going from flight to flight, no matter the transfer time and the prominence of the Priority tag.

It does depend on the originating airport as the priority bags should be loaded in one group.