Dinner in San Diego, luggage in LA...
Well, not quite. Close, though.
Just back from LHR-LAX-SAN, SAN-SFO-LHR. First leg on BA, all subsequent on United. Nothing like longhaul in United to remind oneself how spoiled even Y-class pax are on Virgin... the first time in ages I haven't been able to choose my seat, so welcome to the geometric centre of a 777. Channel 9 was nice, though; hearing the ride reports further along the track really did help.
Anyway. The LAX-SAN leg was on an Embraer EMB-120, which deposited us in San Diego pretty much on time at around 19:00 - but without our bags. My companion's bags turned up on the subsequent flight, but mine were swilling around in LAX until much later. I decided to go to the hotel anyway -- hanging around the airport and missing dinner wasn't attractive. The nice lady who took my details promised that the bags would be ferried to the hotel when they arrived "probably on the 11 o'clock. That's one of the big planes", and they duly turned up at 1am, where the severely zonked SLF was awoken for the emotional reunion.
I thought bags weren't supposed to travel without their owners? But that's not the strangest part of it: when we arrived at SAN, we noticed that there were a load of bags hanging around by themselves next to the carousel. When the next flight came in - the one with my companion's impedimenta - some of its pax found their luggage had already been delivered and was among the stuff that had been cooling its heels since before our arrival on the flight before.
What on earth is going on? Given that we had to go through immigration and practically out of the airport at LAX before handing our bags back in - a few yards away from an open door to the outside - the security implications are not insignificant if someone works out how to game the system.
On the SAN-SFO-LHR return, a completely different process was in place - we were delayed on the first leg due to an overflowing bog, and time was very tight to make the connection. We didn't go through security a second time; instead, we were shown to an unlabelled door behind which a bus took us through the backside of LAX to what looked like a employee-only lift (judging from the signs) that took us right to the heart of the departure gate. Nobody asked us about liquids at any point either, which given United's $5-a-beer policy would have been useful gen!
R