THE TRUTH BEHIND AIRLINE COUNTER DELAYS

I've been in love with air travel since I can remember, and my first recollection of flight was in the early 1960's on a MATS (Military Air Transport Service) plane en route to join Dad who was stationed in Naples, Italy. The aircraft was prehistoric by today's standards; for example the seating arrangement was to arrange to sit wherever there was a space. The consolation prize to Uncle Sam's Discomfort was my sister and I discovering a serviceman in possession of candy and chewing gum, which we mooched successfully until Mom came to the rescue of the poor Marine. My first recollection of a commercial flight was with with the family en route to somewhere (we were military, after all), and it was, compared to MATS, strictly deluxe; a Pan American prop jet with pretty ladies wearing hats and gloves who were handing out drinks and snacks and free "future stewardess" pins for the girls.

My fascination with air travel was cemented in 1970 when the grand-daddy of all disaster films Airport arrived at my local theatre. With the exception of a mad bomber who blew up the plane at 30,000 feet, the film depicted airports and airlines, and all the people associated with them as a romantic, glamorous, exciting way of life and I decided that at some point, sooner or later, I was going to be a part of it. Unfortunately by the time I became a "part of it" and joined American Airlines some 25 years later, the glamour days of air travel had long gone. In it's place air travel became (to borrow and old theatre term), a "fill and spill"; get as many passengers on an aircraft and do a turnaround trip as fast as possible to maximize profit. Gone were the silver service meals, free postcards and stationary or free "future stewardess" pins. In it's place was, depending on the length of the flight, a meal or light snack, and many travel delays.

Before I worked for an airline I used to complain about air travel delays, but I don't do that anymore. Now I know if there's a delay at a security checkpoint it's more often than not a result of one or more passenger's inability to follow simple instructions such as "have your tickets and identification ready please." I know if the aircraft is late out of the gate it's at Captain's discretion, and it rarely happens unless there's a possible safety issue with the aircraft, and no one should complain about that one. I know if there's a delay at the ticket counter, it could either be a system slowdown, high passenger volume or just possibly a ticket agent trying to find alternate routing for a passenger who's the unfortunate victim of a canceled flight, or some other unforeseen circumstance.

And, if a bag is missing or delayed en route you might be surprised to know that there is an entire network of people dedicated to tracking down missing or delayed baggage using an industry-wide system called BMAS (Baggage Management Analysis System) to keep score. While it's a very effective system, it's not exactly simple so if you're delayed at the Baggage Service counter of any airline, it's because some miserable agent has to type in the acronym-version of Gone With The Wind before your "tracer" is initiated in BMAS.

If you're a frequent flyer out of St. Louis, Boston, Miami or Seattle-Tacoma, then, unfortunately, you're probably familiar with BMAS and don't mind the wait. But for those readers who have never had the BMAS Experience and wonder what's taking that idiot behind the counter so long, here's what a real agent must manually input before a trace on your bag can begin. Bear in mind, this is inputted after the agent has entered the information on you, your location, your contact details and your preferred method of delivery. For the purpose of this demonstration, you are Mr Landau, who traveled from Dallas-Ft Worth to Reagan National Airport in Washington DC on flight 1598 on the third of May:

Here's your passenger itinerary: 1 AA1598Y03MAYDFWDCA2344569200324

Here's a description of your missing bag. If we're lucky, it's only bag one per passenger, not ten as I once had to do. Oh, heck, I think Mr Landau lost three items:
1 DB/L/RD22PSW/LEATHER/GUCCI/LL/LANDAU/SHOES CLOTHES CDS
2 DB/L/BK22/CANVAS/NONE/DL/LANDAU/CHILDRENS ITEMS
3 DB/L/GR70/CLOTH METAL/AL/LANDAU/BABY CART

Here's your check-in counter information from DFW: K/03/00/C/0090/DFW

And, your flight information:
FLIFO*1598-4DFW/OUT0818 OFF0839*0840 2DCA/IN1139 *1147 DCADRD.03MAY.1405

While Mr Landau is yelling at me over the counter because I'm too slow, I check the information from Baggage Service in DFW. Most delays are due to weather conditions or missed connections, but for this demonstration, someone at DFW forgot to load the bags onto the flight, so "oops, we missed the flight so we put 'em on flight 1409" is translated into:
5 BIS ON HND CONF TOT3 BAGCHKD TO AA1409 DFWDCA

Unfortunately, that flight will arrive after Mr Landau has left on another flight to Gatwick Airport in London, so I have to sort out the best way to forward his bags. After some checking, I decide to send the bags on to London on a (fictional) US Airways Flight 232 to New York with a transfer to a (fictional) British Airways Flight 2442 is best, so I enter this:

BO1/AA1598/LANDAU/L/US232/03MAY/JFK/EXP3295728/AA1598/03MAY
/US232/LANDAU/L/BA2442/04MAY/LGW/EXP223298/US232/04MAY
BO2/AA1598/LANDAU/L/US232/03MAY/JFK/EXP229092/AA1598/03MAY
/US232/LANDAU/L/BA2442/04MAY/LGW/EXP240157/US232/04MAY
BO3/AA1598/LANDAU/L/US232/03MAY/JFK/EXP244277/AA1598/03MAY
/US232/LANDAU/L/BA2442/04MAY/LGW/EXP244298/AA1598/03MAY

Done. Now Mr Landau can leave the counter with a receipt (that contains none of this information) and hopefully there are only a few more passengers left waiting behind him.

There's the real truth behind ticketing and baggage counter delays. Airline employees aren't slow, lazy of stupid (I've been called all three names, by the way). For the most part they are thorough and accurate out of necessity, and you can rest assured the fictional person at DFW who made the mistake with Mr Landau's bags will be in seriously hot water over that error. That may not be much consolation as you wait in line, but it may give you a chuckle later, after you've calmed down.

Now, enjoy your flight.