Originally Posted by
Dr. HFH
Correct. There's a practical reason. When sorting bags for connection, the bag handlers (regardless of whether human or automated) won't know which pass through the airport you're on, so won't be able to figure out where the bag goes next. Thus each airport can only appear on the bag tag once.
A few years ago, I was checking in at SIN for a flight to GMP via HND.
The agent first tagged the bag for ICN. When I pointed out that was wrong, that I was going to the
other airport in Seoul, they generated a tag with SEL - the Seoul city code.
I wonder where the bag would have ended up if that hadn't been noticed.
Don't the baggage tags have
dates as well as flight numbers and airports encoded?