Are you an impatient traveler like I am? I don’t mind reaching the airport early, as advised by the airline but I feel my baggage should be spinning on the carousel by the time I reach the baggage belt. But that hardly ever happens. As travelers, we're universally obsessed with how our bags fare on the luggage carousel. We rush from the plane to the baggage hall, immediately furious that our suitcase isn't waiting for us. Conversely, we love the anticipation. We enjoy the challenge of selecting where to stand so that we're best-placed to see the baggage emerge, then we savour the feeling of immense smugness when we spy our bag and make exaggerated preparations to remove it from the conveyor belt and swagger through customs. But if the baggage takes too long to appear the conflict between hope and despair starts and I for one am not very happy.
So this time when I was on my way to Kochi by a very early morning flight from Lucknow I made the best use of the company of an airline official who too was taking the same flight to Bangalore, by asking her what could I do to ensure that my baggage arrived at the carousel early? She was very sympathetic and offered a lot of tips, some known and some not known to me. Let me share them with you one by one:
a. Travel light with only cabin baggage. Airlines have a very high tolerance for small but heavy cabin baggage but they do not like large cabin bags even if they are light. The downside of this method is that you will not be able to pack liquids or any other items that cannot go in a carry-on bag as you will need to bring the bag with you through the security checkpoint and to the gate.
b. Your best option of early baggage retrieval is to be one of the last passengers to check in your bags. Bags will always be loaded front to back on the bag carts so if you check in last, your bags will be in the last bag cart, which will make them the last on the aircraft, and then the first off the aircraft at your destination. This only holds good if you have a direct flight, but if you and your bags are changing flights this condition may not hold true!
c. Remember to be nice to your counter agents and gate agents. The friendlier you are the more likely you will get what you want. Chances are the agent has already been yelled at multiple times for things they can't control, so they will go out of their way to help someone who is nice!
d. Flying business or first class means you'll almost always get a "priority" bag tag that separates your luggage out from the herd. But that's not really a trick, so much as a privilege.
e. Some frequent flyer programmes offer this as a perk, even if you're stuck in economy.
f. A "fragile" sticker attached to your luggage makes it more likely to be set aside with extra care and loaded on last. It's worth a shot, at least. You will be asked about the nature of the fragile stuff and my standard answer is ‘surgical precision equipments’. By the time you are depositing your bags it has already gone through the scanner!
g. And last but not the least – have patience! It is a beautiful thing.
We landed in time and I rushed to my belt hoping, like an eternal optimist that both I and my bag would be the first to arrive. Soon my flight-mates started congregating around me and the 'dead as a dodo belt' like migrant geese. The belt gave a hiccup, moved a bit and then stopped. This it did three or four times and it reminded me of my scooter in a winter morning. Meanwhile a Formula 1 trolley race is in the making as all the trolleys are bumping against people and each other for the pole position. But the belt is still not moving! Something tells me that on ECG I am sure to get a flat line....it is dead. Then suddenly it comes to life and our bags start appearing from a secret cave and start spinning on the belt!
My new friend who got down at Bangalore told me that the last bag can take up to 15 minutes to arrive when you arrive in a small aircraft, such as a ComacARJ, and even up to an hour if you were in a large plane such as a Boeing 747. Thank God I have never experienced such delays!
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