Originally Posted by
bc2003nj
If this question is completely brainless, feel free to let me know - I have pretty thick skin.
Anyway, I will be flying from Düsseldorf, Germany and connecting in Dubai for approximately ten hours prior to my ongoing flight to Manila, Philippines. I arrive and depart in Terminal 3. The situation is that there is actually an earlier flight from Dubai that gets into Manila; however, I was unable to book it. As such, I would rather just check in my baggage through to Dubai, pick it up there, and re-check versus having it sit in the Manila airport unattended for seven hours. My primary question is whether I would be able to retrieve my baggage and then head back to the transit area without any problems (e.g. needing to leave the airport once in baggage claim, which would require me to get a visitor visa, etc.). I assume I would have to go through immigration/customs upon re-entering, but as long as I don't need to have any advanced preparation in terms of documentation, I'm fine with that. If the answer is my bag will be checked with me on my scheduled flight compared to it being put on the earlier one, then no problem. It's just that coming from the states, many of the airlines tend to put the bags on the next available flight instead of the one you're actually on.
Thanks in advance for the help!!!
Pete
To answer the "primary question" - if you do as you are thinking and request that your bags are only checked through to Dubai then (if they will let you do that) you would still need to clear immigration as the baggage carousels are the other side of immigration. Once through customs with your bags you would simply head for the departures area in the same terminal (3) and recheck them for the earlier flight if you could get switched to that one. I also have experienced that even post 9/11 bags will sometimes get put on an earlier connecting flight even if you are not on it on the basis that they were with you for the first leg so no risk for a second leg whether you are on it or not - at least that was what I was told when I complained.