The analysis of transient photoluminescence measurements and extraction of carrier recombination lifetimes in GaAs and AlGaAs double heterostructures is discussed. In contrast to recently reported claims, it is demonstrated that even in regions where the measured decay curves show single exponential behavior, the slopes do not, in general, correspond to any single physical carrier lifetime such as the minority‐carrier lifetime. A series of measurements over a range of incident optical intensities is required to extract such lifetimes.