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.
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!
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!
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!
