Originally Posted by
alaskamatt
This point sounds more like a philosophical debate.
Frequent interlining with one or multiple tickets used to be the norm for almost all medium and large carriers in the world.
On one ticket - yes, on multiple tickets,
used to be is the important part, more and more airlines refuse to interline bags on multiple tickets these days.
Originally Posted by
alaskamatt
Again, what if I were to have different elite status on each downline carrier in one ticket, which each provided me with waivers? This drastically increases the complexity and room for misinterpretation.
And that is just one of the reasons why airlines don't like to interline bags on separate tickets.
For single ticket, IATA MSC (or US DOT 399.87) applies and defines what has to be done.
Originally Posted by
alaskamatt
It is also very useful when transiting countries where a transit visa could otherwise be required. It's a Good Thing.
Yes and no, even if an airline allows interlining bags over multiple tickets, it does not mean that the next airline down the way will allow you to board a flight where your ticket ends in a country you have no visa to Enter.
Take as an example, that you had a single ticket ANC-LAX on AS, followed by a single ticket LAX-SVO on SU, followed by a single ticket SVO-CDG on AF, AS might have been ok to check your bags through, and yet SU might have denied you boarding at LAX if you fail to show a visa to enter Russia.
Originally Posted by
alaskamatt
I still come back to the point of the interline baggage agreements themselves. Shouldn't the downline carriers' recourse be to the carrier issuing the bag tag, rather than harassing the passenger in the middle of their journey? I haven't personally read a T&B agreement, but that is my understanding of how they work: money changes carriers' hands in exchange for baggage handling.
In a perfect world, AS should have probably charged you for the extra luggage and "transfer the money" to SU, but it seems that even following MSC rules on a single ticket is some time a difficult job for some agents.