American introduces luggage delivery service. No more baggage carousel!
If yesterday you had asked me to list the top five inventions in air travel I would have said:
Baked on board cookie,
in-flight wifi,
TSA Pre-Check,
in-flight on demand entertainment,
First class napkin with a button hole.
Well, as of today, I’m going to remove the napkin with a button hole (unfortunately, it’s going away anyway) and add American’s new luggage delivery service to the list:
Enhancing Your Travel Experience
Let Your Bags Meet You At Your Destination
We’ve teamed up with BAGS VIP Luggage Delivery to give you the freedom to travel light and focus on what’s most important to you. Whether you’re traveling for business or pleasure on your next domestic trip, enhance your airport experience by letting the luggage experts take care of your bags for you.
Sign up sounds pretty easy. After you’ve purchased your ticket at AA.com:
Click on the “Have Your Bags Delivered” action button on the banner of the Reservation Details page and you’ll be taken to a third party site
There, you’ll sign up for an account with BAGS VIP Luggage Delivery and will input your travel information, including your American Airlines record locator
After completing your order, you’ll receive an email confirmation
If you decide to use the service after you book your flight, you can register up to two hours before your scheduled departure by selecting My Reservations from the Reservations tab located on the AA.com home page.
The cost starts at $29.95 for one bag, $39.95 for two, and $49.95 for three to ten.
I don’t always check a bag, but for those times that I do, if I can skip waiting for my suitcase, then dropping it off at the hotel, and instead go straight to a meeting…well, $30 sounds like a bargain.
And if you’re traveling with kids and luggage? It might just be the best $50 you’ll spend on vacation!
It’s available starting August 6 and includes 200 US locations and several international cities. Go here for full details.
Photo: Bag claim
Credit: Wesley Fryer on Flickr
“I don’t always check a bag, but for those times that I do” – you sound like the “most interesting man in the world” :-). Potentially a helpful service though!
@ baga – It’s the tux that I wear when I write. 😉
Somehow I think that adding yet another player to the chain of custody is going to make lost baggage scores worse. Great idea but I see a huge mess on the horizon with this service.
@ Victor – The only time I check a bag is when I travel with my Fabergé egg, so if it gets lost… 😉
Thanks for the comment and thanks for reading!
I actually think it has the potential to hold some value for certain customers in certain situations. It will be interesting to see if AA sticks with it.
If you value service (i do), AA five star service should be on your list. Drop avod from the list; bring your iPad!
http://upgrd.com/sitinfirst/american-airlines-expands-5-star-service.html
@ Sitinfirst – You make a great point, I completely forgot about Five Star. Bye bye, IFE! 🙂
Don’t they already do this? Problem is it takes them 3 days to locate bags and deliver them to you at 3am 🙂
This is absolutely perfect for parent travelers. One less thing to worry about.
It is too much mandatory to be secured in these all the place like Airport and Tourism place,terror can take place over there if there is any mistake will have been done by the security staff!
Thanks for telling the security system!
I like the lack of question mark here at the end.