First experience with QF "Priority" baggage.

[Flyer]

Warning: Rant Below

So this year is the first year I have flown enough to break free of PS and last week I finally qualified for a shiny new QF gold card (well I'm assuming it's shiny, the welcome pack hasn't actually arrived yet ).

So Saturday was my first flight with my freshly minted SG status. I was travelling for work to complete a quick earthing compliance test of a substation. This does require a fair bit of equipment (3x22.999999kg bags to be exact ). I was travelling with a NB colleague and up until this trip we would be headed to the sales counter to pay for the extra bag, but not this time. I happily attached my two complimentary tags and my colleague's one to our luggage and noticed for the first time the black "priorty" circle had been added to them. I then took them to the bag drop thinking maybe these circles would mean we would have a quick departure from the baggage claim at the other end.

We headed to the domestic business lounge (QP wasn't open yet) for a quick coffee and a snack and then headed to the gate. As I got to the gate and went to hand over my boarding pass, the gate attendant asked me to wait as they had been instructed by ground staff to hold further boarding. I then heard over the radio the flight was overbooked by 1pax and overweight by 250kg of freight. We were boarding near to the middle of the croud so I wasn't too concerned about being bumped, but as I boarded I said to my colleague "let's hope they don't unload our luggage or we'll be screwed.".

You can probably guess the next bit I was sitting in 9F glued to the window watching the three ground staff unloading the bags and checking them off on their manifest as they went. At first I was pleased to see that they closed the door without removing my bags. But then they opened up the next compartment and the first two bags off were 2 of ours. They pulled out a couple more then closed it up and we were pushing back, as I watch my bags, as well as at least 2 other "priorty" tagged and a couple of SG and WP qtags drive back to the terminal.

I knew that the next flight was midday the following day (the one I had booked as my return). So there we were flying to a test that we knew we couldn't complete without that equipment knowing that the earliest it would arrive was the inbound flight for our departure.

The thing that annoyed me the most is that if those bags didn't have that "priorty" circle they would have made it to the destination, just as they have every time I flew as a PS.

How does Qantas think it makes sense to remove the baggage of their most loyal customers over those of pax who may fly with them once a year? If this this their standard approach to correcting an overweight A/C then pax with high status will experience delayed baggage far more often then the average pax. As not only are they in the air more often, but their bags are always the ones targeted for unloading. This is simply punishing customers for their loyalty.

Tl;dr - Why does Qantas punish customers for their loyalty by unloading their priorty bags first when an A/C is overweight?

 

[FlyboyAl]

re: First experience with QF "Priority" baggage.

Welcome to the land of Gold!
Regretably you will find prioity baggage is hit or miss! Yesterday, one of bags came off 2nd, the other was about 52nd!
Other times they have been 1 and 2.
There is little to no logic in how it woks.

 

[Denali]

re: First experience with QF "Priority" baggage.

Not QF but VA and our bag came out absolutely dead last and it was tagged priority.

I dont rattle off complaints often but I did and we got 10K points.

 

[Gnaroots]

re: First experience with QF "Priority" baggage.

Thanks for sharing this with us

 

[bsb]

re: First experience with QF "Priority" baggage.

Qantas does a lot of things really really well. Sadly, priority baggage is not one of them. Travelling AA around the US - priority bags off first or close to, every time.

 

[Himeno]

re: First experience with QF "Priority" baggage.

Priority baggage is hit and miss. Some airlines/airports do it really well. Others not so much. It can even depend on which baggage team is handling that flight.

I don't recall ever having a problem with tagged bags when using the full service Asian carriers/airports. Almost always getting bags in the middle or end with BA, AA and QF vary a lot.

 

[Happy Dude]

re: First experience with QF "Priority" baggage.

Not getting a published benefit? Some might argue that this is an actual new low point for QF.

 

[RooFlyer]

re: First experience with QF "Priority" baggage.

Because priority bags *should* be the last on, so they can be the first off. On a non-containerised aircraft, it could be a time-consuming exercise to offload all the priority bags so they could get to the non-priority ones, then offload whatever is required then reload the priority bags again.

I get that you're unhappy, but if they'd done it your way, then other pax would probably be complaining here about the delay involved in moving all those bags in and out, and saying 'why didn't they just take the closest ones off?'.

For the airline, this is a no-win situation.

I don't agree.

First, the airline promises that priority bags will occur, so presumably they have figured out how to accomplish it, which would also include how to offload other bags if needs be.

Second, other airlines seem to manage it.

The 'priority baggage' thing has been a fiasco for years and years. The airline must know it doesn't work as advertised/promised, yet they continue to promote it as a benefit. If they do find themselves in a no-win situation, they only have themselves to blame. I think Qantas deserves all the opprobrium it gets over this issue.

 

[serfty]

re: First experience with QF "Priority" baggage.

I learnt very quickly from my first few years with status that my checked bags were just as likely to come out after domestic flights in the first 25% as they were to come out in the last 25% ... or the quarters in between.

Baggage handlers simply won't do it. .. nor is it enforced. (Although every so often attempts are made.)

 

[ozbeachbabe]

Qantas does a lot of things really really well. Sadly, priority baggage is not one of them. Travelling AA around the US - priority bags off first or close to, every time.

I found AA pretty average with 'priority' bags. After an ORD/LAX flight there were heaps of non-priority bags on the same flight that came off before ours not to mention there are about 6 or more flights AA using the same carousel as only 4 baggage belts at T4 LAX.

DL in LAS weren't much better with 'Sky Priority' tagged bags arriving 40 minutes after the flight arrived well after heaps of non-priority bags.

Had a better result in HNL after flying LAS/xPHX/HNL on AA with bags arriving on the carousel only a couple of minutes after arriving at the baggage claim area.

 

[Quickstatus]

Has anyone thought laterally?. If Priority luggage is slow why don't at checkin decline the priority tag . Maybe it will come out quicker or will not be left behind when aircraft is full.
Ive done it before eschewing the "business" tag and yes the checkin agent thought I was mad, but understood the reason I gave her. The bag came out within the first 20 or so.

 

[Danger]

Has anyone thought laterally?. If Priority luggage is slow why don't at checkin decline the priority tag . Maybe it will come out quicker or will not be left behind when aircraft is full.
Ive done it before eschewing the "business" tag and yes the checkin agent thought I was mad, but understood the reason I gave her. The bag came out within the first 20 or so.

It's a lottery though and that's the problem. There's no guarantee (or even, really, a better chance) one way or the other.

 

[juddles]

I do think that priority tagging makes a (positive) difference, but have learnt over the years that there is no guarantee - on any airline. I think the positive difference gets outpaced by our expectations - hence continual disappointment.

 

[JohnK]

It's a lottery though and that's the problem. There's no guarantee (or even, really, a better chance) one way or the other.

It has been a lottery on domestic flights for both Qantas and Virgin for a long, long time. It is not really a big deal even if a published benefit. The 115th bag takes ~3-4 minutes longer to come out than the first bag unless there are serious issues.

In BKK recently I have waited ~45m on one PG flight and close to an hour on another flight for the first bag to come out. And oversize staff decide to go to lunch/shopping together.

 

[Danger]

It has been a lottery on domestic flights for both Qantas and Virgin for a long, long time. It is not really a big deal even if a published benefit. The 115th bag takes ~3-4 minutes longer to come out than the first bag unless there are serious issues.

In BKK recently I have waited ~45m on one PG flight and close to an hour on another flight for the first bag to come out. And oversize staff decide to go to lunch/shopping together.

I'm not sure how not providing a published benefit is not a big deal.

And what can that three or four minutes result in? Ten deep at every immigration counter? A 30 minute wait for a taxi?

 

[Chesty]

Priority baggage is a flat out joke, not just on QF but on most airlines. In fact they should do away with it as ground crew in most airports around the world simply don't prioritise baggage. So many times my bags are tagged priority on both domestic and international and it has zero affect. My bags come out last.

 

[JohnK]

I'm not sure how not providing a published benefit is not a big deal.

And what can that three or four minutes result in? Ten deep at every immigration counter? A 30 minute wait for a taxi?

The challenge would be to get Qantas to provide consistent priority baggage.

It hasn't been happening for the 10 years or so I have been Platinum. I don't expect it to happen anytime soon and organise my time accordingly.

I don't know what it would take to get this benefit consistently. New baggage handlers? Petition for Qantas to act?

 

[maroonone]

I believe QF and others should stop advertising it as a benefit because it just does not happen with any consistency and once you have contract staff rather than airline (like a lot of other things) the chances of it working are close to zero. Slightly OT but in 40 years of flying my one missed bag was a domestic with the magic WP tag attached and self checked. I now always check in at counter to keep them in a job and ensure there are staff around when it all goes pear shaped.

 

[kallinch]

My best priority baggage experience (where it actually worked) was on an EK flight landing at CPH. They had a seperate baggage belt for J & F and both my bags subsequently came out first!

 

[alphahelix]

just to update this thread more than 12 months since first started nothing has changed. Back from overseas on QF J few days ago at MEL, priority J tag meant nothing. Didn't have high expectation in the first place given past experiences and I was right again this time around....luggage came out late again. . Should the blame be on QF or the airport baggage handlers i wonder. I also have this theory that by checking in too early will result in late arrival of bags at the destination.