shortchecking does work
Ok, to give you an update on the shortchecking situation with KLM (see above posts 49-58) -- it did work in my case. I had a return flight IAD-AMS-TXL, and needed to fly only IAD-AMS. The layover in AMS would have been less than two hours. Simply told the check in person at IAD that I needed to retrieve my luggage in AMS to leave it there -- voila, no problem, no discussion. Luggage only checked through to AMS and ready to be picked up. So this seems to be some form of discretionary decision by the relevant agent. I would also think that the airline should not have a say in this; after all it's my luggage and I can do with it whatever I want. But, as Irishguy said, it's probably something you can't rely on (even though my example shows that it's possible). Hope this helps.