Originally Posted by cnicklo

We will will be flying IB in April to Europe using two different award tickets (the first being the longhair US-Madrid and the second being the connecting flight to our European destination).

As far as I understand it award flights using Avios have to be booked separately and that is what we did. Would it be possible and recommended to call the reservations center and request that our tickets be linked? I'm thinking one benefit would be so that checked bags would route automatically from flight to flight.

We'd appreciate any thoughts and especially any actual experiences doing this (and the results!).