I went to see my golf coach in Doylestown, PA, as part of my trip to Philadelphia (see Guns & Butter: Philadelphia Travel Guide (Political Edition). My instructor was gracious enough to drive me to the airport to catch my flight home. Sitting in traffic, I wondered if I would arrive at the airport with enough time to check in my golf clubs. Most airlines state that at least 45 minutes before departure is required. I arrived at the airport 1 hour and 20 minutes before my flight.
The AA agent said that I could not check in my clubs and recommended that I put them back in my car if I wanted to make my flight. I informed him that I didn’t live in Philadelphia and I was going home. He said that the next flight was first thing in the morning.
While not as sickening as when I was denied boarding to Doha for the World Cup in 2022 (see Epic Failure: Denied Boarding for the World Cup), I did feel stupid that I might miss my flight. I pleaded with the agent and was told to go to the special assistance counter.
At that counter, the agent took my ID, weighed my golf bag, and gave me my boarding pass without hesitation.
I don’t think there’s a Travel Lesson to be learned here, but I will add it for future reference as a reminder that traveling with checked bags comes with risk.
Was it one of the agents by the kiosks? American at some places has a “sub-category” of agent who aren’t actually trained agents – just kiosk assist people with minimal training. PHL has these. No reason you should have been denied – the real agent at least followed policy.
I don’t know if PHL is this way (though wouldn’t shock me as the bag system is ancient) but golf clubs may have to be taken to a specific place that isn’t the main bag belt to go through to TSA. Probably got a lazy person at first.
“We’re American Airlines, doing what we do best!”
Wasn’t a negative experience, but an interesting one with Delta and golf bags.
Had a morning flight out of Chicago so took a ROC-DTW-ORD routing the day before, checked a golf bag and a suitcase with no issues at ROC. Rather than rush with a 1hr connection, I booked a leisurely 4 hour connection as I couldn’t check into the hotel with the earlier arrival and I had Skyclub access.
My suitcase came with me on my flight but my golf bag went with the earlier flight. Just wondering if they did that since it would be easier to get the large golf bag to the destination on a flight with space in the hold on the earlier flight than risk it not getting on my flight.
I can sort of answer this as I used to manage airport operations… In all but the newest baggage systems, golf bags don’t usually fit the entire same path as a suitcase because of the length versus powered turns, possibility of rolling (with some hard sided cases), and similar. So they often take a different path from the ticket counter to the airplane whether it’s down an oversize belt/chute, different TSA screening area, or after TSA’s in-line screening it won’t go on the system from there to where ramp picks up (the part most likely to have been re-built in the last 20 years is the part from counter to where TSA does behind-the-scenes screening).
So the golf clubs end up getting picked up somewhere different than your suitcase going to the plane. Thus it may not be loaded in the same place on the plane as it went in a different cart, if it was considered overweight may have been planned in another bin, or arrived last minute as TSA sometimes forgets to put stuff out the separate chute, etc. At ROC it made it into the plane. At DTW, it probably came off in a different order and they have specific transfer agents there looking for bags by city. They grabbed it maybe looking for people going on the tighter ORD connection and by the time they actually scanned the tag, they said oh well, wrong flight but right city, there you go. It was long gone from your inbound plane before your suitcase saw the light of day.
Yeah, this totally makes sense. Thanks for the insight.
I was a little surprised when I saw my airtag reporting the golf bag was on the runway when I was in the terminal with my suitcase somewhere in the building lol.