We’ve been asking for this for a long time now, but the wait (at least for Delta passengers) is finally over. You can now follow your checked bag on Delta just like you follow a package on FedEx. And that’s only a part of what the airline is doing to make things move more smoothly. This is good stuff.

I was excited about this, so I went to the Twitterverse to find people who had checked a bag on Delta so I could see some real-time results. I couldn’t have asked for a better marriage of technology than what resulted. I received a response from a Twitter follower who was using internet on his Delta flight and was worried since he had checked his bag for the first time in two years. He had the bag tag number, and I sent him the link to the bag tracking page at Delta.com. The results showed this:

So here he was, sitting a few miles above the Southwest US in this airplane, and he was able to check and see that his bag had been scanned planeside as it was boarded on to his aircraft. Friggin’ beautiful, isn’t it?

But what happens if the bag gets lost? I had another Twitter follower respond that his bag had been missing for days. Here’s what Delta showed:

That’s not pretty. It looks like his bag was scanned on the airplane, but then it was sent back to the sort area and now it’s disappeared. If it’s found, it will be scanned and that will show up here. He’ll also be able to see when it gets on another flight to his destination. Let’s all just hope that they find it one of these days.

That’s not all Delta is doing here. The airline is taking this one step further as well. I’m told that you can sign up for alerts to be sent directly to you in regards to bag status. I haven’t found where to sign up for this or how it works, but it’s on its way. I’m sure we’ll hear more soon.

[Got an update from Delta on 4/21 @ 930a: SkyMiles members can login to delta.com and then select ‘profile’ from the menu options. From there, they can select ‘Contact Me’ and subscribe to our ‘Last-minute Updates’ feature which provides our Medallion customers with alerts on their upgrade status and now has the ability to alert any SkyMiles member about the status of their checked baggage.]

In addition, Delta has brought the claim form into the 21st century. Until recently, once you reported your bag lost, you had to fill out a paper claim form for reimbursement. But now, you can do it online. Finally.

So, Delta is making a lot of strides here in terms of making the baggage process more transparent for customers. Great stuff. We need to see more like this.

Uh oh. It looks like the DOT has found something else they don’t like about airlines with which they want to get involved. This time, it’s the refunding of bag fees when bag aren’t delivered. Guess what? I agree with the idea.

First I’d like to say that I hate when the feds get involved with anything, because they usually screw it up. It sounds like definition of the words “timely manner” might be in play right now, and you know this will never be implemented properly. Of course, had the airlines been more proactive in this area, they wouldn’t have had to deal with this. I realize that when Secretary Ray LaHood gets his focus on something the airlines do, he seems to enjoy rushing it through without actually measuring consequences. So, let me give some suggestions on what might make sense here.

The key is determining what exactly you’re paying for when it comes to bag fees. I believe that you’re paying the airline to deliver your bags to your destination on the same flight you’re scheduled to take when you check those bags. If you show up on that flight and your bags don’t, you should have the fee refunded. I’m not so sure it should be a full refund, but we’ll talk about this later.

Of course, bag fees aren’t new, but they’ve never impacted as many people as they do today. Bag fees have existed for ages when you think about excess and overweight bags. I would say the excess bag fees should also be refunded if the bag doesn’t arrive because you’re ultimately paying for that specific piece to go with you. Overweight bag fees, however, should not. In that case, you’re paying for the extra care and liability involved in handling such heavy bags.

The focus, of course, is on whether or not the standard bag fees should be refunded. I think they should. Others, including the airlines, will disagree. Are you paying for the bag to be delivered on your flight or just delivered at all? After all, the airline still has to do all the work to carry the bag, even if it arrives late. That’s where the amount of the refund comes into play.

As I said, I think you’re paying for your bag to travel with you, but that doesn’t mean the airlines couldn’t create a different structure if they wanted. What if the airlines said (numbers are just for demonstration purposes) that you could pay $30 to check your bag on your exact flight or you could save $15 for the airline to deliver it within 24 hours. In other words, in exchange for giving you a discount, airlines could pull your bags off your flight because it’s already full or it’s running late and put it on a later flight instead. They would trade revenue for operational flexibility. In that case, if you paid $30 and your bag doesn’t arrive on your flight but comes soon after, you’d get $15 back. If it didn’t arrive within 24 hours, you’d get it all back.

Some airlines have already tried to address this issue, and they deserve credit. The one that’s received the most attention is that Alaska gives you a $20 voucher if your bag doesn’t arrive at the carousel within 20 minutes. It’s not a refund, but it goes a long way to at least recognizing that the airline has a responsibility. I also just learned that Delta has a $25 to $50 voucher if your bags are delayed by more than 12 hours. That surprised me (in a good way).

Only one airline, however, has really stepped up to the plate. Frontier has now put the most concrete policy out there. If your bag doesn’t arrive on your flight, you get a refund of the fees. If those fees had been waived because you bought a higher-priced ticket or you’re an elite member, you’ll still get a voucher for what the amount would have been. Great job, Frontier. It’s all part of that airline’s recent customer-friendly changes. I’m planning to write about that later this week.

What do you think? Should the fee be refunded? (I suppose I’m most curious to hear from those who think it shouldn’t.)

[Original photos via Flickr users rynosoft and Unlisted Sightings/CC 2.0]

Yesterday, I attended the official launch of a new inline baggage screening system in Delta’s Terminal 5 at LAX. After taking the tour, it dawned on me that a lot of people probably don’t know what happens to their bags after they kiss them goodbye. So, let’s talk about it.

But first, let’s talk about what inline baggage screening is. You know when you go to a ticket counter, check bags, and then find out you have to drag your bags over to another place where they’ll screen them? That’s the old-school stopgap way of handling screening. Once the rules came out requiring 100 percent screening of all passenger bags, airports had to figure out how to shoehorn these massive machines into the existing baggage systems which were in no way designed for them. The easiest way was to simply plop a machine down in the ticketing lobby and make everyone drop their bags there. Then the bags would enter the system. This sucks for three big reasons.

1. Those machines take up a lot of space and make for some cramped quarters in an already crowded ticketing area.
2. It’s a real pain to drag your bags from the ticket counter back to the scanning machines and then wait in another line if a lot of people are there.
3. It’s a really slow process to do it all manually.

As you can see below, the first and second problems are solved with inline bag screening. This view of Delta’s ticket counter at LAX was cluttered with CTX screening machines and now it’s much more open.

For those reasons, many airports have gone toward inline baggage scanning systems. These systems have traditionally been installed into the existing baggage system. So they shut down the system, stick some machines in there and then turn things back on. You might think this sounds easy, but it’s painful. These are usually pretty expensive and can take a couple years to install. This new system that was designed by Siemens acts a bit differently.

Instead of sticking the system into the existing framework, they build a new structure that contains all the bag screening equipment. Then they just divert the bags from the existing system into the new one for screening and then it goes right back into the existing system. In this case, they say it’s half the price of another system (this was $30 million) and it took “only” nine months. If you notice a new bulge on top of Delta’s Terminal 5 at LAX, that’s the new system. They just built it on top of the existing structure. At right in the picture below, you can see the ramp that was built to connect the existing systems to the new screening area.

Now, what happens to your bag? When you check it, the bag runs down belts into the baggage system. The first stop is the big CTX screening machines. There are four of these in Delta’s terminal at LAX. Once in the machine, a decision is made on whether there’s something potentially harmful in the bag or not using automation. If it’s not deemed harmful, the bag moves along. If there is a red flag, then the image is thrown up on a screen where a TSA agent decides whether or not it’s actually a threat. If there’s any question about it, the bag is sent to a TSA agent for a search.

After the security work is done, the bag goes back into the baggage system where it is then sorted so that it goes to the correct flight. In more sophisticated systems, there are a number of scanners that look at the bag tags and automatically decide at which gate the bag needs to be. I’m told they have over a 90 percent success rate in this terminal when it comes to reading the tags in Terminal 5 at LAX. Other places have a manual process for getting bags to the right airplane. Once at the gate, it’s loaded on the airplane and then it joins you on the flight to wherever you’re headed.

This sounds pretty easy, but there are a million exceptions. Oversized bags don’t fit on the belts, so they have a different process. Then, of course, there are connecting bags from Delta and from other airlines. Add mail and cargo to the mix and you’ve got a incredibly complex system.

Expedia Drops American Airlines — Right After Orbitz Battle – BNET Headwinds
Expedia has now joined the fight against American, which seems ironic since it just gained an advantage after AA pulled out of Orbitz. This is much bigger than that, however.

Continental-United Merger: How the Airline Emboldened Its Pilots – BNET Headwinds
United lost its bid to put a Continental code on 70 seat jets in Continental hubs. That’s good news for pilots.

Southwest’s Muddled Attack on Change Fees May Backfire – BNET Headwinds
Southwest has released its new change fee ads, and the message isn’t nearly as clear as “Bags Fly Free.” In fact, this could backfire.

In the Trenches: Learning in the Aftermath – Intuit Small Business Blog
Now that the big winter storms during the holidays have passed, it’s time to revisit what worked and what didn’t. We do need to make some changes.

As Sabre Enters War Over Flight Bookings, American Has to Find New Strategies – BNET Headwinds
The distribution war that American started is reaching a boiling point, and now the question is whether American will be able to find a way to survive without the GDSes.

Sabre Makes the Wrong Choice By Removing American Airlines – BNET Headwinds
Now looking at it from the other side, Sabre is not making the right choice here.

It’s been a quiet week on BNET this week, and that’s because they were busy launching a completely revamped site. So they locked us out while they made the changes, but now it’s back and better than before. Instead of being a contributor on BNET Travel, I now have my own blog called Headwinds (BNET Travel is gone). I’ll continue to post at the same rate as before, but you’ll now only see my posts. I would, however suggest browsing the other blogs as well, because there is some great stuff in there.

So make sure you update your bookmarks. The old industry.bnet.com/travel site is so 2009. Start using this link from now on:
http://www.bnet.com/blog/airline-business
And the new RSS feed is:
http://www.bnet.com/blog/airline-business?mode=rss

Southwest’s Chronic Flight Delays Are Getting Worrisome – BNET Headwinds
Southwest had another month with a fair number of flights delayed more than 70 percent of the time. With the DOT’s increasing focus, they’re going to need to work on this.

Delta Woos N.Y. Fliers as Chicago Shuttle Targets UAL, AMR – Bloomberg
Bloomberg ran a piece about Delta moving into the LaGuardia-O’Hare market with full force. I see this as an attempt to “win” New York, so it’s targeting American more than anyone else.

How Southwest Made Hay With “Bags Fly Free” – BNET Headwinds
Southwest keeps getting more creative with selling its bags fly free prop. This time, it’s a ground ops agent getting in on it.

US Airways Pilot Dilemma Spills Into the Courts -BNET Headwinds
The US Airways pilot brawl is heating up, and management has been dragged in. Now the airline want clarification on what the heck it’s supposed to do.

United-Continental Merger: Suspicions Confirmed as Exec Team Leans Toward Continental – BNET Headwinds
John Tague is out, and Continental is starting to take over.

How Social Media Can Save Airlines Time and Money – BNET Headwinds
There’s a lot of debate about whether or not social media is worth. I say yes, and the benefit can be quantifiable.