And it just gets better. Now some airlines are targeting PAX that are not part of their alliance. One world, Sky Team and Star are choosing to exempt their members in some cases. This does not bode well for AS which prides itself on not being part of any one alliance.

When they do this to other airlines' customers, naturally the other airlines will follow suit.

In the last year, if I check in on DL and I have a separate ticket on AS, they would check it all the way to the final destination on my AS ticket thereby bypassing having to pay AS's fees. Now, with the airlines doing this, AS will see more revenue because DL will no longer check the bags on AS for you. You know how the airline industry works, once someone starts doing this then everyone will follow suit eventually.

This is the exact wording from DOT:

"In addition, airlines and ticket agents will be required to disclose baggage fees to consumers when they book a flight online. The first screen containing a fare quotation for a specific itinerary must show if there will be additional baggage fees, and inform consumers where they can go to see these fees. Information on baggage fees also must be included on all e-ticket confirmations, and for most trips the same baggage allowances and fees must apply throughout a passenger’s journey."

The triggering aspect that is causing the airlines to stop checking luggage for separate tickets is bolded. The DOT does not forbid interlining, the DOT still allow the airlines to continue to do what they have been doing for years. The only change is that the appropriate fees must be disclosed and remain consistent throughout the journey. So, I agree with you, the DOT is not telling the airlines how to handle our luggage and assumed that the airlines will do the right thing. Unforunately, they chose to come up with a new customer unfriendly scheme. Now, the DOT has another issue they have to come up with a modified regulation to correct the airlines' shrewd behavior. Why can't they just do the right thing, and by doing the right thing will not require any additional legwork as they have been doing the right thing for YEARS. Yet, AS decides to point fingers at DOT as the cause for the change, when in fact, the new DOT's policy will have little to no impact on how the airlines check luggage, which is a blatant lie on AS's part.

To avoid this mess, the DOT can remove the latter part of the new regulation, but continue to require the airlines to properly disclose the fee schedule for checked luggage. When the customer books his/her ticket they can review the baggage charges and decide if they accept and acknowledge that they will be expected to pay the relevant fees they can continue through the booking process. If they feel the fee is too high, they have a choice to not book the ticket or book with a different airline. So, if I book an AS ticket operated by DL, then AS SHOULD disclose/inform me of DL's baggage fees [which is $5 higher than AS I believe], so I don't show up at the airport thinking I will only pay $20 and be upset when the DL agent asks me for $25.

No, you are not fine if already ticketed, according to my inquiry at Delta. And it all boils down to whether you have one ticket or not. Even 2 tickets on an airline alliance partner won't be interlined. :td:

Just what we need are longer TSA lines, right?

Think about the people who already have booked tickets and don't read FT. How many will miss their connections?

Ouch.

I wonder what will happen if someone checks a bag on the first ticket, but the bag is delayed. I assume that the first airline won't want to deliver it to a hotel at the second destination. It could sit at the intermediate airport, but the passenger might well be using a different connection point on the return tickets.

Someone could also get in trouble if they are forced to gate check a bag using a system that delivers these bags to baggage claim rather than planeside. This is a contingency for which consumes cannot be expected to plan either additional time or travel documents such as visas. I can imagine fights over the request to check a bag when the bins are full.

For me, lately when I fly to Tampa I've found the best fares and flight times to be SEA-ATL on AS, then ATL-TPA on DL. Purchased as separate PNR's.

So even as a Gold75k that gets free checked bags with DL, I've still got to go through this rigmarole? Even where there are no fees to be collected????

Sí.

Aye carumba! :mad:

Best you can hope for is that SEA-TPA route that has gotten some play in the FT rumor mill. I hope it happens for you!

That's been rumored so long that I've given up hope :(

Can you clarify what you mean by define proper baggage allotments?

There's a long-standing IATA convention (200+ carriers worldwide) that dictates the carrier transporting the passenger on the last segment to destination/stopover is responsible for luggage (tracking if lost, and compensation). This isn't changed by the DOT rule effective 1/24/2012.

Perspective
 

By their own admission, only 20% of AS pax will be impacted by this:

•Total passengers enplaned 2011: 17.8 million
•20% of that equals 3.56 million per year
•That equals just over 9,750 travelers per day will (could) be impacted.

And that just at Alaska Airlines. Granted, many of those travelers may not check bags, but the numbers would be staggering if this could be quantified on an industry basis.

I believe this came about because consumers complained to DOT about being "surprised" about baggage fees of the second carrier when not disclosed upfront...along the same lines that the airlines must disclose all fees & taxes upfront. Once again, what was intended to be "helpful" for consumers has backfired on consumers.

I would like to see the DOT implement two additional rules to correct the issues caused by this rule:

1) Require all airlines who have a baggage interlining agreement to through-check bags regardless of whether they are on the same ticket or two separate tickets
2) The passenger shall receive the most generous baggage allowance and fee schedule due to that customer as allowed by any carrier involved in the ticketing, marketing, or operation of any flight in the originating itinerary.

#1 would address the issue in this thread. The only defense the airlines would have would be to all turn into Southwest and not allow interlining, and that won't happen, because then their ability to sell connecting travel would be significantly diminished.

#2 would address the issue brought up previously in the AS forum, which is that it is now possible under the new rules for an AS elite flying on an AS flight to have to pay a baggage fee if they bought the flight as part of a codeshare itinerary on another carrier on which they are not allowed any free luggage. (I specified "the originating itinerary" so that any baggage allowances from connecting but separately-purchased tickets won't affect the baggage fee schedule; that would make it far more difficult to program the computer systems to correctly calculate the baggage fees.)

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's PWP wondrousdevice3.0: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

Well not phrased the best- but both # of pieces and weight is what I was thinking- plus applicable fees.