Originally Posted by
ScottSchultz
I think this topic has come up before but I haven't seen any updates for quite some time. My wife, daughter and I are scheduled to fly UA ICT->ORD on one UA PNR. Then we are connecting to LH ORD->MUC->MAN on a separate LifeMiles award PNR. I don't think it matters, but just for more information, we are business class on all 3 segments. My question has probably come up before in the past, but can the agent at ICT (Wichita) check our bags all the way through to our final destination MAN (Manchester, UK) if they are on separate PNRs? Mind you, ICT isn't exactly a mainline hub for UA and likely just has contract workers at the check in desk. Is is possible? If so, can I get some feedback from people here on how to walk the agent through how to do it? I've read the contract of carriage and it SEEMS possible, but the verbiage isn't clear to me. Then I've read other blogs that say no dice. Any help/advice you can give would be appreciated. Thank you.
Is it possible? Absolutely. Is it a given every agent, particularly at an outstation will know how to do this? For sure not. As mentioned, give yourself some extra time. I don't think three's many on here that can explain the process to do it, but if the agent helping you can't do it, ask if they can get their supervisor to. As mentioned, for *A carriers, it is policy to be able to check them (and while it can theoretically be done for non *A carriers that have an interline agreement with UA as well, policy is not to do this on separate tickets).
Originally Posted by
uanj
Yes, they can. You may want to allow an extra 20 minutes for them to call the help desk. By the way, checking through on Star Alliance flights is a policy for all star airlines.
Or perhaps longer than 20 minutes. I just had this done for me at SFO, for UA to SQ on separate tickets, and it took 40 minutes, maybe 45 (didn't time exactly). To be fair, somehow I had a bigger issue where the agent, and initially a sup, was having the computer tell them that my SQ flight was an 'invalid class' (whatever that means). Eventually, the sup was able to get it through, though I'm not sure why it kept coming back as an invalid class, or how the sup solved it. When I asked what to do if this happened next time, supervisor tole me to 'ask for Ed' - him obviously, I'm grateful to the check-in staff for the effort they put into it (and with a sense of humor to boot), but I can suggest that there are many other agents that might have just given up at some point without bothering to keep trying. So I for one am really appreciative that they were able to get it done.
Also a note for the OP - make sure, once you land in ORD, to find an LH agent to make sure they properly had the bags transferred to them. Just let them know the bag was transferred from a UA flight on a separate itinerary, and have the bag tag ready so they can make sure they have record of the bag in their system.