Originally Posted by
B747-437B
You will be absolutely fine. Ethiopian should be able to not just check your baggage through to final destination, but also issue your boarding passes all the way through to Johannesburg, notwithstanding the multiple PNRs.
So we've completed our journey and everything went well.
When we first walked up to the ET counters for check in at JFK, I explained to the customer service agent that I had two separate PRNs and we needed to check our bags and print boarding passes all the way to JNB, as well as gave her copies of both reservations. She didn’t hear a word I said. After printing our boarding passes to ADD and printing a couple to bag tags to ADD as well, I explained that we had two separate reservations. She indicated that she didn’t see the second reservation. I pointed out the second PRN on the printed copy, and also showed her the second reservation on my ET phone app, and again explained about two separate reservations (PRNs) but we wanted to check luggage and print boarding passes all the way through to JNB. At this point it registered with her what we were trying to accomplish, and she as well as several colleagues tried to carry out our request. At this point the more senior of the group (my impression) took our passports and printed reservations and disappeared for 10 minutes or so. She returned with all the correct boarding passes and printed out luggage tags to ADD and JNB. Big relief for us there. Entire check in process was 20 minutes or so.
I saw on our boarding passes that we had lounge access at JFK. I thought to myself, “humm, only AA has lounges in terminal 8 at JFK” and that is what we were granted access to. Also, not the Flagship lounge, but just the Admirals lounge. That’s better than no lounge and we stayed there before our flight.
Our first ET flight out of JFK closed the door 70 minutes late, keeping in mind our connection at ADD was two hours. Fingers crossed at this point. JFK-LFW-ADD made up some time and we ended up having a 90-minute connection at ADD. We followed another couple who were also connecting to JNB (and were familiar with ADD) and made it to the gate about 10 minutes before boarding. Another big relief. Once we arrived at JNB all four of our bags showed up after a 25-minute wait.
BTW that is one long flight itinerary. Ethiopian Airlines Cloud 9, in flight product, was a real treat. Fairly older hard product, but the staff was lovely and really spoiled us in business class. I also found the connection at LFW to be super interesting.
B747-437B I can’t thank you enough for the guidance earlier, it truly helped. Jimmy