Originally Posted by
VegasGambler
I have a related question. Are US airlines better than European ones about checking bags through when traveling on separate tickets?
Over the summer, I had an early morning MLA - HEL flight, followed by HEL - SFO a couple of hrs later. Both flights were on Finnair, but on different tickets (I was mixing vacation and business travel)
Finnair refused to check my bags directly MLA - SFO. I had to pick up my checked bag in HEL, and check in and drop off my bag. This was actually more risky than I thought it would be -- due to a long check-in line at HEL, I only made the bag check deadline by about 5 min.
Is this normal? I know that it's 2 tickets, but it's not even interline... it's the same airline. Now I'm wondering if that's really Finnair's policy, or if the agent just didn't know how to do it.
It's not strictly a regional thing. It used to be OneWorld policy that member carriers must check bags and protect otherwise legal connections across multiple tickets within the alliance, but that requirement ended in 2016, and some carriers immediately forbade through-checking bags. I actually had BA check a bag through to AA the day before the new policy was announced (and immediately took effect) and BA stopped allowing it. I've heard that at least QR continues to allow it, though.