Originally Posted by
QuietKnight
I'm no expert on this, but I just did a quick Google search and found this:
http://www.nwa.com/plan/guide08.html
Since this seems to be the policy of Northwest, I don't see how it could be a federal rule. But like I said, I'm no expert and perhaps this page is out of date.
No that NW page isn't out of date. I arrived late for a NW flight in March and they followed this policy to the letter, special tags and all. Turns out that I was just a couple of minutes late and it was a small airport, so they had no problem getting the bags on my flight.^
Bottom line: Even post 9-11, airlines do have the ability to accept checked luggage after the cutoff....