Originally Posted by baburai

I posted a little upthread about my experience with Virgin Atlantic -> Indigo transfer. JFK-LHR-DEL-CCU. Our DEL connection was T3->T1.

Relevant to this post:

1. Our bags were *in theory* checked all the way through to CCU. In practice, we had to haul it ourselves to T1 and check in again. The Indigo checkin counter at T1 did not generate a new bag tag. They printed new boarding passes and “associated” the old bag tags with our new boarding passes.

2. We were given DEL-CCU boarding passes in the JFK checkin counter on the Virgin codeshare. Indigo checkin counter told me that these codeshare boarding passes, generated almost 24 hours ago, are missing some info that only gets generated at the last minute. They said something about “PNR not being available for the domestic leg”.

3. Because of #2, our boarding passes were not valid instruments for entry into T1. We had to visit Indigo counter on T1, with passport and other details for ALL passengers, for them to give us a printout of the itinerary using which we could enter.

Tangentially related: in my experience, there is little monetary, or other benefits to booking return itineraries on complex international routes with many stopovers. So I always book point to point, one way (after comparing prices, of course). e.g. I just booked a JFK->MUC…BUD->LHR-stopover(3 days)-LHR->JFK flight. Booking it as three separate one ways came out cheaper than the online multi-city option. The point I am making is that complicated routing (like ATL-DED) can probably be booked as two one ways for no additional cost, and gives you additional flexibilities to boot.

I learned this the hard way once when I missed the ORD-FRA leg of my itinerary a long time ago, and now try to book my international itinerary in pieces whenever there is stopover involved.