veggie_lover

I am flying to singapore and connecting at Dallas. The problem is I only have 45 minutes to make my connection in Dallas to catch the singapore flight. I am concerned either I or my bags won't make it if my domestic flight is just 10 minutes late.

Now this is an award ticket, so can I fly the night before to Dallas and spend the night there, but have my baggage checked all the way through? My award ticket already has one 3-day stopover in Japan. Would this be considered a second stopover so not allowed?

jrockway

Award rules may preclude this, but it is possible to have your bags checked all the way through. I recently flew CPH-LHR-ORD with an overnight layover in LHR, and the BA agent that checked me in at CPH seemed confused that I wanted to claim my bags in LHR. "Are you sure you don't want it checked all the way through to Chicago?"

So it is certainly possible.

AAaLot

Best I can tell it depends on the airport of connection and airport of check-in.

I have had SAL-MIA-ORD-TVC allow overnight bags where SFO-ORD-TVC has not

I think DFW is a 'yes for overnight' airport, but I am not sure.

Your overnight connection should be okay.

Deltahater

you are allowed a stopover in your region and one at the US gateway, so you can have a stop in NRT and in DFW. Also, if you are less than 24 hours in DFW it is not a stopover...

Do you want to "waste" a day in DFW or chance it? Can you fly into DFW sooner? Where are you coming from?

Thumper

I did this at LHR. Got in around 8PM and flew out 9 AM the next morning.
AA flights all the way. Came in from a two day stop over in Zurich. I think that is applicable to what you are asking, anyway I hope so.

Delays into DFW are not hard to imagine. You can get to your seat allot easier than your luggage. I would suggest the overnight if you could.

SJCFlyerLG

How about MIA? I have an overnight connection this Saturday, with a Sunday morning flight to AUA. Does anyone know if I will have to collect a checked bag in MIA?

Yes, I know that the contents are highly at risk in MIA, but I seriously doubt there will be anything worth pilfering in the bag.

thebutlerdidit

My wife and I are flying from Dulles to LAX to HNL; with overnights at LAX both ways.

It would be much easier not to have to carry all our bags to the hotel at LAX for the one night.

Can we/should we let AA hold the bags overnight at LAX?

law53

You're right - it depends on the gate agent and the airport.

With ONT-DFW-ORD including an 8 hour/overnight in DFW, the gate agent checked my bag all the way through to ORD. Even though the bag spent the night in DFW baggage area.

With SNA-DFW-ORD including an 8 hour/overnight, the gate agent refused to check the bag through to ORD telling me they cannot be responsible for the bag in DFW and that I would have to claim the bag in DFW and recheck in the morning.

So two itineraries, two different outcomes.

Steve M

I have the same issue with an upcoming overnight and wanted to get the straight answer. I called AA, and they told me that I'd have to claim the bags since it was an overnight connection. I pushed back, and asked how exactly they define "overnight connection." I pointed out that it can't simply be that the connecting flight departs the next calendar day, since in a hypothetical situation of a passenger arriving at 11pm and then departing on a connecting flight at 12:15am the next calendar day certainly wouldn't be expected to claim and re-check bags just because the clock struck midnight. I further pointed out that in my situation, the fare rules allowed for it to be a connecting flight, rather than a stopover, and in fact it was ticketed as a connecting flight, rather than a stopover. The agent said "hmmm," seemed to understand my question, and then went off to check. About 10 minutes later, she came back after having conferred with the baggage department, and had the authoritative answer:

You must reclaim bags on an overnight connection if the connection is more than 12 hours.

In my case, I have a 13+ hour connection, so I'm out of luck. But if in the future I had less than a 12-hour overnight connection, and really wanted to be able to through-check bags, what I would do is call reservations, go through what I just did so that the agent has the authoritative answer, and have them note my call and the answer in the reservation. This way, if the check-in agent at the departing airport has a different understanding, you have something to point them to.

Travailen

As an alternative view:

On a recent return trip through LHR back to ORD, I decided to overnight at T5 Sofitel (that is another thread for another time ) and had checked my bag through to ORD (I almost never have checked luggage, this was one of the few exceptions...wonder why? ). I was on BA to LHR, connecting to AA for the LHR-ORD segment the following day. The layover was about 18 hours. When I arrived at ORD...NO luggage.

As it turned out, these airports are rigged for rapid luggage transfer, and my overnight storage was enough to have the bag drop off the system -- I guess it went rouge

In any case...they locate dit pretty quickly at LHR and had it on a flight ASAP -- as I was home, really no hassle other than the time waiting at the carousel...on the flip-side, I had front-door delivery.

So, I guess all I am warning against is the idea that you can assure baggage delivery at all. Given the number of bags in the system, airlines do pretty well. If you keep it on the same airline, or within the same alliance -- this usually helps... but too long a connect time can sometimes be as troublesome as too short a connect time.

Happy Travels!