United Didn’t Load the Gate Checked Bags?

January 5, 2013 - Rick

After two days in the air flying Sydney to Bangkok, then to Narita then Chicago our last leg home to Savannah was on a regional jet booked to capacity. No bump, but full.

After we had boarded and the door was closed the attendant notified us that not all the gate checked carry on bags made it on the plane. Now I’m really confused here? Help me out. Little green tag on United, red on American and pink on Delta that we drop off at the boarding door did not make it on the plane?

We haul all our stuff around in carry on bags so we don’t have to risk the airline losing our luggage and now I find out that they didn’t load all the gate checked carry on bags? What is going on here? Why wouldn’t they offload some of the checked bags and deliver them the next day to those poor unfortunates that check their bags? We never check bags. It is too risky and takes too much time.

Are the domestic airlines really that screwed up? Katy and I live one hour away from the Savannah Airport and it was almost 11 PM on arrival. Worst of all I left my car in the airport parking lot and my keys were in my gate checked carry on bag. If the bag didn’t show up, I’d be renting a hotel room and waiting a day at the airport for the next United flight to deliver my gate checked carry on bag and car keys so I could then drive home?

I put my car keys in my carry on so I don’t lose them in a hotel room, have them fall out of my pocket in an airline seat. Our prescriptions we carry to our seats with us in our day packs along with our itineraries and hotel documents.

Am I crazy here or have any others of you been afraid of losing your gate checked carry on bags? We flew for two hours not knowing if our particular bags made it on board, then it seemed like another day or two (well it felt that way) as we watched the baggage carousel spin away hoping we weren’t stuck in Savannah for the night awaiting the next flight from Chicago.

Our gate checked bags did make it and we ran like hell to get out of that baggage area. I’d hate to be in the position of having to work that one out with those that were not so lucky. Is the whole point of carry on and gate checking so the bags don’t get lost. Don’t count on it.

Live and learn.

Ron

I fly frequently on domestic flights and never check a bag. I’ve never heard of a similsr situation. Are there industry-wide statistics that can be accessed to see just how often this occurs?

A potentially unfortunate situation which worked out for you in the end. I disagree with your inference, however, that checked bags already loaded should have been unloaded to make room for gate checked bags.

If two people are assigned the same seat with valid boarding passes, the person who is first in the seat will keep the seat. So, a similar principle with bags. Additionally, a lot of people pay extra $$ to check a bag.

I think that they should have made an announcement prior to closing the aircraft door, affording people the opportunity to see if their bag was one of those not making the flight. That would have given those people the chance to retrieve critical items (ie. car or house keys, medication not needed during the flight) or wait for the next flight to travel with their bag.

I assume that the airline would have delivered late arriving bags to the homes/destinations of affected passengers.
http://twitter.com/realeasttexas Denis Lakhturov

This post is one more proof that aside from pushing for credit card sign-ups this blog became nothing more than bragging about being a better kind of people than the “poor unfortunates”.
I also carry on my bags (when not travelling with children) but instead of feeling “fortunate and smarter than the crowd” I feel grateful to those who took the risk of cheking-in their bags and (1) made boarding and unboarding a bit quicker for myself (2) saved some room in the overhead bins to put my coat instead of packing all overheads to capacity and making me sit and sweat for several hours.
The more I fly and look around the more I realize the airlines made a mistake by calling frequent flyers “elites” because they indeed somehow started feeling better than the others.
aaron

Definitely bizarre how that happened, but still, never ever leave keys or medication in a bag that you are separating from.
jay

never seperate yourself from your keys or meds. even with gate checked bags… come on, thats travel 101.
http://twitter.com/quietnolonger CDB

I’m always amazed (shouldn’t be by now) at the amount of time all you ‘free’ flyer bloggers devote to complaining. There’s always something or someone that inconvenienced this elite flyer. (blog shocker alert: Traveling doesn’t always go smoothly.) But now you need to start complaining about things that COULD have gone wrong, but didn’t?! Wow. It was bad enough having to hear your complaining about ‘actual’ traveling hick-ups. This new concept should give you limitless material with which to fill your bog. Yay.
(Boggles the mind to think about the degree of complaining you’d reach if you actually had to pay even close to the actual value of your travels. Zoiks!)
Vicky

Not sure why you believe that gate checked bags should get precedence over regular checked bags that have been paid for. Very rookie mistake on your behalf to not carry your car keys with you.

Peggy Collins

I agree on both points. If I pay to check my bags, they darn well better be on the plane. If you got forced into gate checking because you weren’t willing to pay the cost (both monetarily and time wise) to check, then I certainly don’t think your bags get a priority over mine. Glad it all worked out in the end. Does one of your underseat bags have a lanyard to attach keys? That’s where mine go as soon as I’m on the parking lot shuttle on departure.

mark

Wow. Gotta say I agree with every comment posted so far.
Chris H.

Hi, I’m not sure but most of the comments probably missed the point that NOT all the gate checked bags were loaded as

If they did load all of them, and you were worried that they might not show up, it would have been out of place. But thats not the case here.

Apart from that, they should have given some info about it, a lot of people d leave important things in carry-ons to precisely avoid this situation.
Ricky

Who leaves their keys in a checked bag?? I thought you were an experienced flyer. (shakes head)
Steve A

I’m guessing you really mean “valet checked bags” which you leave in the jetway for the airline to load. If that’s the case, then I wholeheartedly agree with you that they should have not taken some of the regular checked bags. If you mean actual gate checked bags that they checked because the overhead bins are full, then I agree with the other posters.
http://www.facebook.com/richmatthewsflies Rich Matthews

I’m not going to attack but I can confirm this is not uncommon at all. Especially with a full or fullish flight, even the small commuters are carrying cargo and guess what? On some airlines cargo is paying a lot of the bills. SO airlines occasionally “Knowingly” do not load all of the bags due to weight restrictions. If this happens the ground crew has options, and often they will take the path of least resistance which is simply stop loading and say “no more bags.” That’s easier than climbing into the cargo bin and seeking something heavy. All I can say is it is not unheard of and I have had it happen to me on United Express and American Eagle flights.
Jason Roberts

Wow, hate to pile on but this is a complete rookie mistake. And a silly blog post. What if your bag were simply lost, as happens ALL THE TIME to checked bags. Where would your keys be then? Same place as if they didn’t have room for your gate checked bag.

That said, it’s a nice PSA for those would put important things in anything other than a bag that fits under the seat in front of you. If your bag needs to go in the overhead bin, there’s a chance it might need to get checked these days.

But as others have said, complaining about certain things that happen commonly in travel isn’t going to help your blog or enhance your rep as knowledgeable about travel. Some advice: post things that readers might want to read in a tone that’s appropriate, not personal complaints to fill space, but really just waste our time.

United Didn’t Load the Gate Checked Bags?

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