I bought a ticket on United to fly from SJC to BOS via SFO. I go from SJC to SFO via the southbay flier, a bus. So... If I check in at the United counter in SJC, do I really need to board the south bay flier, or can I drive to SFO and then board my flight to Boston? Has anyone ever done this?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by sfbear:
I bought a ticket on United to fly from SJC to BOS via SFO. I go from SJC to SFO via the southbay flier, a bus. So... If I check in at the United counter in SJC, do I really need to board the south bay flier, or can I drive to SFO and then board my flight to Boston? Has anyone ever done this?</font>

Sfbear, welcome to FT! You will find that you do much better in terms of discussion, questions and answers if you post in one of the forums in the "FlyerTalk Miles" section of FlyerTalk. The other sections (like "Airports"!) is really a kind of Siberia and posts can go unanswered here for weeks.)

Anyway, take a look at the links in my post on this thread:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum50/HTML/008257.html
Most of your questions will likely be answered there, I think.

The consensus, as I read the discussion in the threads I posted in that note is a) lots of folks have done this, b) they get away with it, and c) you need to be sure you tear out the "flight" coupon for the bus segment before presenting yourself for check-in at SFO.