I ran into a tricky issue yesterday on a three-segment flight from Tanzania back to Toronto (ZNZ-ADD, ADD-VIE, VIE-YYZ). The issue was that I could not get the boarding pass for the final segment (Air Canada) either during the online checking or at the checkin counter at boarding (in Tanzania with Ethiopian Airlines). When I arrived in Vienna, I assumed I would go to the airline help desk and get it there. But security would not let me go from the transit area to the international area without a boarding pass. And the help desk was in the international area. They basically told me I was stuck in the transit area. Which sounded like shades of a movie Tom Hank did.

In the end a supervisor came and overrode things and let me in. When I went to the airline help desk, they basically told me off that 'these code-share bookings never work' and I shouldn't have booked such a ticket. Never mind all airlines are star alliance and that the ticket was booked on the Swiss airlines website (ie their grouping of flights). The person at the counter said that Air Canada, United and Turkish airline systems are not fully integrated into Star Alliance and as a result, the checkin counter at Ethiopian can not issue the boarding pass. They insinuated that booking was invalid and just asking for the problem that I had. One final data point is that at checkin, the agent was able to tag my luggage all the way to Toronto. They just couldn't give me a boarding pass.

I've always assumed that as long as the flights are Star Alliance, the booking would work. Also, I swear I've had multi-segment flights where I had to get the last boarding pass enroute and never had a problem with security before.

Anyone know is this is a Vienna-only problem or a more common issue?

thanks and apologies for the long message.