Le Chic Geek
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A while ago, Keri mentioned that you have to make sure your airline puts your orange priority tag on your bag.
They have changed how the tags get printed out, so there is a bold alert on your tag letting the agent know to put the Orange Priority tag on the bag.
But I’ve been getting lazy, so sometimes the agent will miss, and I’m less vigilant.
In fact, I was waiting for my tagged bags in JFK the other day next to another set of Chairmen. We decided to “race” our bags. They failed to get a tag when they checked in, I got one.
Their bags–the tagless ones–came out immediately before mine. So, we made jokes about how the tags are useless.
I cracked a similar joke to a US Airways employee the other day. And she stopped me there. She told me to never forget to get those tags put on my bags.
She said it is rare, but sometimes because of other (non-baggage) cargo the airplanes are transporting, the plane gets too heavy. And since they issue certain guarantees with the cargo they take on, they can’t just pull the cargo.
So sometimes they “bump” a bag onto the next flight to lessen the load. When they are looking for a bag to bump, they never will grab one with an orange tag.
They have this priority program to make it easier to identify elite’s luggage so that they will never pull their bags. The priority unloading and delivery to baggage claim, according to this employee, is a secondary priority.
I want to stress, this is what one employee of US Airways told me and is not an official statement by the company or Star Alliance, nor do I put 100% stock in it. But I could definitely see this as a possibility, and it being a possibility alone is enough for me to always get my bag tagged. (And I can always track to see if my bags made it on the plane via the US Airways tracking site).
It’s been a few years *knock on wood* since an airline has lost one of my bags. How about you?
If you are on SkyMiles, make sure to get the yellow and black SkyPriority tags!