VS020 SFO-LHR 19 Jan 07 (PE)

This is a Trip Report from the Premium Economy cabin

Ground Staff

Food & Drink

Entertainment

Seat

Cabin Crew

Aircraft : Cosmic Girl
Seat 70A (Fixed)

Checked in online, arrived at the airport around 1:10pm, no one at Premium or On Line check in so used Upper Class. Found that there was an open seat on row 70, pefect. Initially she told me there were no open seats in this row.

Was asked why I had 3 bags, and advise the girl that ski boots and ski's normally count as one, and as a Gold member, I have a 3 bag allowance anyway.

The lounge was fairly quiet when I got there, managed to get some work done and we were caled around 4pm.

Priority boarding works well to get on the air biridge, but it was full of the remaining passengers. When I got upstairs, i found they had finally fixed 70A on Cosmic Girl, it does n't appear to shake as much each time you sit forward, and I am fairly sure it reclines fully now.

Crew not very chatty, but very pleasant and helpful, locating my bag a few times from the big cupboard by the stairs.

Landed at 10:30am, and quickly off the plane. Met NapaMatt at the bottom of the stairs when he spied my V-Flyer luggage tag.
I was bored on my way to the airport and decided to test out the priority luggage system.

My Ski Boot bag had an Upper Class Tag on it, and it did come out first, my main bag had a PE tag on it, and it did come out much later, albeit with some Economy bags. And my ski's had no tag, and they came out towards the end.

Next time, I'm flying to Boston, I'll only have 1 bag, but at the end of Feb I'll be flying to Denver, so I'll most likely try all UC tags.

The PE Miles promotion, only netted me 29,658 and not 32,148 as per the table Virgin have published. Awaiting a reply.

Looks like you had fun testing the baggage system and it looks like it appears to work!!!

Have fun skiiing and a good trip back[:D]

[preiffer]

Umm - actually, it proves the baggage system DOESN'T work. [:0]

The bag system (in terms of what bin items are loaded in) is apparently electronic at SFO, and all driven by your PNR/barcode on the bag.

It doesn't actually matter what physical 'tag' is placed on the bag - the system grabs bags for the priority bins and routes them accordingly. (Or so certain VS staff have told us before...)

[HighFlyer]

It is electronic, the check-in agent just needs to ensure your luggage is checked into the right bin (J) if you are FC Au and not flying in UC.

Thanks,
Richard

EDIT:- Yes it was me (Richard) that posted this, and not Sarah. [:I]

I see what you mean - I guess the key thing is to make sure the check-in agent tags the bags correctly and then make sure they also have the physical tages on too!!

Are the physical tags required for places like the Caribbean where the airports are small and seem to do everything manually?

originally posted by ukcobra

no one at...On Line check in so used Upper Class

I don't understand [?] - there isn't an on line check in desk is there?

^^^Actually, last time i checked San Fran WAS manual loading. I remember being surprised seeming as it's quite the major airport...

So it does indeed matter what tags are on your bags.

Ok - so who REALLY knows if SFO is electronic or manual and isnt it thereofre a good idea to make sure the UC or PE bag tags are attached, just to be on the safe side?

Originally posted by chrisV

originally posted by ukcobra

no one at...On Line check in so used Upper Class

I don't understand [?] - there isn't an on line check in desk is there?

Yes there is, It's called the Bag Drop, and normally people staff it separately to PE, but there was no one there, so I walked to the other end and checked in at the UC end.

What I meant by the Priority Baggage test, was that the labels do in deed appear to be important, and that the BarCode means very little.

Mark

Oh right, didn't realise you meant the bag drop [:I]

Thanks anyway

Chris

Originally posted by MarkJ
Ok - so who REALLY knows if SFO is electronic or manual and isnt it thereofre a good idea to make sure the UC or PE bag tags are attached, just to be on the safe side?

I recently asked Customer Services about this, as I've had lots of problems with priority baggage from SFO. They checked with the SFO Station Manager, and he confirmed that it is manual sorting and loading. I shared Lipstick's surprise, too!

What seemed to be happening was that even though a UC tag was applied to my bag at check-in, it was being snagged off in transit through the baggage system, before it made it to the manual sorting.

Now I think about it, the old VS-employed check-in staff at SFO used to always put two tags on my bag (a Travelpro Crew-4), one on the top handle, and one on the side handle - it wasn't unusual for one or the other to be gone by the time the bag came out at Heathrow.

I quite like the system that United, LH, SAS and BMI use - where the priority tag is a bright orange 'flag' which is stuck into the luggage label. Those don't seem to get damaged as much.

Cheers,
Mike

I flew yesterday (21st Jan) from SFO->LHR in UC. When I checked in, I heard the agent say 'Upper Class' to the bag handler (the one who takes it from the check-in position to the conveyor belt). I had affixed a UC tag to the bag myself, but in any case it seemed to come out fairly early with the bags at LHR - though not early enough for me to think it was getting any special treatment. I agree with the other poster that, given the manual loading system at SFO, VS should come up with a bright red tag which is fixed to the computer tag. This is what UA does and it seems to work better, as I've experienced.

Maybe VS should do what American Airlines used to do / still do to highlight 'premium' bags. They stick a day-glo orange tag that says 'Premium' (I think) between the computer bag tag, at a right angle to the tag, so it sticks out each side of the computer bag tag.

As the 'Premium' tag is stuck between the computer tag, it's not going to get seperated from the bag in a hurry. Also, due to the colour of the tag, the baggage handlers would have to be very colourblind to miss the priority bags.

I guess from AA's viewpoint, this is also a good method to use, as the computer tag from a previous flight needs to be removed before the bag is checked in again - and doing so sort of destroys the 'Premium' tag, so it cannot be sold on ebay. (Have just looked and amazingly there are no UC baggage labels for sale on ebay UK at the moment).