At this point most airline travelers have reluctantly come to the conclusion that it’s not a question of whether or not there will be more fees and less service, but simply what those new fees will be and when will they be added.
U.S. airlines, except Southwest, already charge for checked baggage, so the natural progression is just to increase those fees. But it looks like they have another idea in mind — do-it-yourself baggage tags.
Now, to be fair, it’s not completely do-it-yourself. The airlines involved in this latest experiment aren’t giving you blank sticky paper and pens. Not yet anyway.
But according to the ARTA (American Retail Travel Agents Association) newsletter, American Airlines, Air Canada and Delta are working on trial programs with TSA to let travelers tag their own baggage. (Some low-cost airlines already do this in Europe.)
Airline employees already get the individual tags printed out of a machine at check-in, with the passenger’s name and a bar code. (Which is certainly an advantage over the old system of hand selecting different tags for each airport.)
This means that if passenger were to do their own luggage tags, in theory they should be the same, and should match.
Then once the bags are tagged, passengers would take them to an airline employee in a special line. The employee would check identification, scan the tag, and place it on the baggage conveyor.
As with all of these innovations, however, the devil could be in the details. From an airline point of view it should reduce, again, the need for humans at the airport. This has the unintended consequence that if there are problems and delays, there are fewer humans around to help.
Problems here can and probably will be exacerbated by a passenger who has overweight bags. More than once I’ve been at an airport where someone didn’t know the weight-limit rules. It’s seldom an easy fix. Either a mad re-packing effort, an argument, or tears are likely to result. These overpacking reactions are not going to keep the line moving.
Then of course, what happens if a slow drop-off line means a passenger misses the baggage cutoff, even though they had the bag tagged in plenty of time?
Finally, what happens when luggage is delayed or lost? Will the airlines use any possible passenger error as an excuse? For example will they airlines blame their passengers if the tags fall or are torn off? Or if they don’t put the tags on with maximum visibility? Or the tags get creased? The excuses are endless.
Plus, of course, there’s the natural followup to most airline innovations — eventually new charges for anyone who doesn’t take advantage of them. It’s unlikely airlines would immediately start charging extra for passengers who want an agent to check in their bag for them.
On the other hand, if the do-it-yourself-bag-tag trials are successful, it’s also likely that the airlines will start instituting such a fee in future for the human touch in the future. Stay tuned.
Janice Hough is a California-based travel agent a travel blogger and a part-time comedy writer. A frequent flier herself, she’s been doing battle with airlines, hotels, and other travel companies for over three decades. Besides writing for Travelers United, Janice has a humor blog at Leftcoastsportsbabe.com (Warning, the political and sports humor therein does not represent the views of anyone but herself.)
