U.S. airlines carried more than 470 million passenger
bags in 2022.
For decades, most bags flew for free, but in recent
years fees have surged, boosting the bottom line of
the nation's carriers.
Bag fee revenue for U.S.
airlines was more than $6.7 billion in 2022.
The larger aircraft I mean those will have hundreds of
bags. So we'll have flights with up to five, 600 bags
coming off those flights in addition to cargo.
To prevent lost luggage and ensure passengers are
reunited with their bags upon arrival a complex
ecosystem has evolved.
Yes, everything has changed.
We have more people coming in.
We see more bags.
At Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson
International Airport, more than 30 miles of conveyor
belts, an army of 2,000 workers and a fleet of
airport tugs, ferry bags from the terminal to the
aircraft.
Well, it really pretty much just like driving out on the
street, except you have to look out for planes.
So this is kind of the heart of the operation.
Right now, everything is green, which is good.
We'd like to see green, but on a very busy day, it could
turn very quickly.
In addition to the sheer volume of bags, the network
also has to contend with external factors like
weather.
Claim belt 9 maybe backed up a little bit because they
got all the bags going up. But we're completely clear
right now. We have no Fort Lauderdale.
There's a lot of complexity behind what goes into
ensuring that a passenger's bag arrives at their
destination with them.
The biggest challenge that we face, quite honestly, is
the weather.
Severe storms, along with a technical meltdown, forced
Southwest Airlines to cancel more than 16,000
flights in December 2022, causing luggage to pile up
at airports nationwide.
When Southwest had this meltdown, probably the worst
one that they have ever had in their history.
They had bags all over the country.
It took weeks for them to sort out this mess.
There are few things more annoying with a trip than
showing up at baggage claim and you're there, but
your bags are not.
U.S. airlines mishandled nearly 3 million bags in
2022. A mishandled bag is one that was lost, damaged,
delayed or stolen.
So what steps do airlines take to prevent lost
luggage? And how does Delta Air Lines move 100,000 bags
a day through the world's busiest airport?
Global bag fee revenue was estimated to reach $29
billion in 2022, almost 39% higher than a year earlier.
American Airlines earned more than $1.3 billion in
bag fee revenue in 2022, making up more than 2% of
the carrier's full year revenue. But charging
passengers for transporting their personal belongings is
a relatively new revenue stream for airlines.
In the late 1970s, the first ultra-low cost airline
People's Express actually started to charge people to
check bags. That was it was five bucks a bag but they
were the only airline that did that at the time.
An economic downturn and rising fuel prices forced
carriers to search for new sources of income in the mid
2000's.
When jet fuel prices surged and on the brink of the
financial crisis, the airlines pressed the panic
button.
American Airlines started charging passengers $15 for
a checked bag in 2008.
Other airlines, including United, quickly followed
suit. By the end of 2008, bag fee revenue for U.S.
Airlines was $1.1 billion.
And that revenue has continued to climb.
If airlines weren't making money from checked bags,
they wouldn't be charging for it.
With the exception of Southwest Airlines, which
allows two checked bags for free, most carriers today
charge for luggage.
Your first bag at Delta, for example, cost $30.
JetBlue charges $35.
Baggage fee revenue at U.S.
airlines surged to $6.7 billion in 2022.
Those bag fees have incentivized passengers to
bring more of their belongings into the cabin,
increasing boarding times and in some cases, the
turnaround time for the aircraft.
So what people do now is bring pretty large carry on
bags onto the plane.
And if you've ever tried to board a plane, you could see
how maddening it is for the person trying to fit their
bag in the overhead bin. Sometimes to everyone else
watching them do it, including the flight crews.
A longer boarding process means a plane is potentially
missing out on valuable flying time.
JetBlue flights, for example, sit at the gate, an
average of 76 minutes between flights, 12 minutes
longer than its scheduled plan.
Planes aren't making money on the ground.
They're making money when they're flying.
And it's not just checked bags that airlines have
started charging fees for.
Low cost carriers like Allegiant, Frontier and
Spirit Airlines have customers pay to bring carry
on bags aboard the aircraft .
With more than 80 planes taking off and landing every
hour and more than 90 million passengers moving
through its terminals annually, Hartsfield-Jackson
Atlanta is the world's busiest airport.
Along with those travelers come millions of bags.
On a busy day in Atlanta, Delta Air Lines can handle
as many as 100,000 pieces of checked luggage.
The lines are getting longer and longer and longer.
The volume has really, really picked up real, real
heavy. And like I said, the bags are getting big.
So at that point, using the self tag bag process, the
passenger will then proceed to the counter.
At that point, where well, that's where I come into
play.
To help the airline and its passengers keep track of
their bags Delta, like other airlines, embeds each
paper bag tag with RFID technology.
So as you print out your bag tag, when you check your bag
in, there's an RFID in there that allows our system
to understand all the information about where
those bags are supposed to go. And the system will
route those bags according to the destination and the
time.
Updates on Delta's app are sent as your bag goes
through the baggage handling system when it's on
the plane and when it has reached its final
destination. Delta Air Lines says it has a 99%
success rate for bags arriving on time.
We lose a bag practically never.
It's a fraction of a percent of the time that a
bag is lost. However, it's about 1% of the time that a
bag may get delayed and and when it does, it's generally
on the very next flight.
But that last 1%, that's that's where we're fighting
against every single day.
Delta Airlines carried roughly 74.5 million bags on
its planes in 2022, 410,000 bags were mishandled by the
carrier. Southwest Airlines carried 121 million bags on
its planes that same year and mishandled 655,000 bags
. On domestic flights U.S.
airlines are responsible for a lost luggage reimbursement
of up to $3,800 per person.
Weather is often a factor.
We're looking at some rain outside the window right now
. As you've got weather, you've got delays.
It leads to gate changes.
It leads to all sorts of operational difficulties.
Lightning within close proximity to an airport, for
example, can be hazardous to ground crew and may
require suspending operations.
Once that clears, it's just mass chaos because you have
all these airplanes in the air that are holding in
patterns waiting to land.
They're all landing at the same time.
The customers are rushing at the same time.
So it's just a mad dash to make sure the bag stays with
the customer.
Flight connections and last minute itinerary changes add
another layer of complexity to the system.
When you're taking a connecting flight, obviously
the risk of your bag getting lost literally
doubles because you're not taking one flight you're
taking two.
I got a bag down there 593778 that Von rerouted for
tomorrow. It's going tonight now to Mexico City
can of give you the tag, can i give you the tag
number.
The real difficulty the tricky part is in the
transfer bags.
Those are the bags that fly in and have to fly out.
About 75% of flights in Atlanta are connecting trips
. For connections under an hour.
Delta uses baggage tugs to drive luggage directly from
one plane to the next.
About 20% of our bags are transferred tail to tail
every day, and then 80% go through our baggage handling
system.
A lot of what we're doing is trying to keep up with
passenger itinerary changes. So we try to be as
customer friendly as possible but the more
convenience you offer to the passenger the more
complex our job becomes down here.
With 35 miles of conveyor belts and roughly 2,000
workers who sort bags, offload planes and ferry
luggage to departing flights, Delta's Atlanta
baggage operation is a 24-7 undertaking.
Once in the network, bags are first screened by TSA
agents using one of the department's 32 explosive
detection machines.
If an alarm sounds, an image is sent to determine
if a hand inspection is required. TSA agents in
Atlanta scan and sometimes hand search over 40,000
checked bags a day.
Explosives are extremely rare, but it has happened.
And so sometimes we find guns in bags that weren't
declared. We found all sorts of strange things dead
animals, bear heads, car parts, lawnmower, you name
it.
Once cleared Delta's control room, agents monitor the
miles of track, looking for bag jams, belt tears and
faulty motors.
The control room sees an average of 20 to 30 jams per
day.
If a line goes down, something like that is very
impactful to our operation.
Screens in the control room are color coded - green is
good, purple indicates a problem and red means a
stoppage. If a problem arises, technicians are
dispatched to address the issue.
Middle North. Middle North.
You have a missing bag jam Air B1-11.
The response time is measured in minutes and jams
are even measured in single minutes.
If a bag is through that's oversize or awkward angle
and it creates a jam, we'll go out and make sure that
jam is broken up and the bag is free as quickly as
possible.
Bags with a connection time of three hours or more are
sent to Delta's cold storage area.
In the bag room, luggage is loaded onto carts and into
containers.
My job here in this bag room here is to make sure no bags
are left behind. You'll see anywhere from 800 to 1,000
bags that'll drop during a shift.
That'll be managed by about 3 to 4 people.
Tugs are used to transport cargo, mail and luggage to
the planes.
Planes always coming in different directions.
So you have to be on your P's and Q's.
You have to stay on your A-game at all times.
Wide-body aircraft like this Boeing 767 and enroute to
LAX can hold roughly 260 people and typically has
about 200 checked bags.
Those bags get loaded into containers.
Each container called "cans" holds about 35 to 40
bags. Load agents are responsible for making sure
bags and cargo are in their proper position.
Narrow-body planes are loaded and unloaded by hand
by a 3 or 4 man ramp crew.
Each aircraft is packed differently based on the
number of passengers, where they sit on the plane and
the number of bags.
If the airplane is too heavy on the front, we have an
issue. If the airplane is too heavy on the back, we
have an issue. So we want to balance that airplane
just perfectly.
In addition to baggage, cargo has also become an
important component for airline revenue.
So we've got a very robust cargo business.
We move a ton of U.S.
mail, we move vaccines, we move lots of medical and
pharmaceutical freight.
Delta had cargo revenue of more than $1 billion in
2022, 39% higher than 2019.
U.S. airlines carried 853 million passengers in 2022.
I think a lot of people see what I refer to as the
anthill. It looks like you've kicked over an
anthill and there's just a lot of activity once you've
got a nose for it, once you've been in the operation
for a while, you don't see ants swarming, you see what
I call the ballet.