Athena53

An update on this: as expected, the BA staff at DEL parroted the policy and would check my bag only to LHR, not DFW. I actually ended up having to go through Customs and Immigration at LHR just so I could retrieve and re-check my bag. Fortunately I'd scheduled a very long layover and was able to use the Priority Immigration line. The separate PNR was also a source of anxiety on my way over; I figured that if I somehow missed my LHR-DEL (PNR #2 ) flight due to late arrival of my flight (PNR #1 ) from North America into LHR (unlikely since I'd booked an overnight at LHR but I'm really good at finding things to worry about), BA would probably take no responsibility for getting me to DEL on a later flight without charging a lot of money.

Lesson learned; I will never again book a trip on separate PNRs just because the Web site doesn't allow booking the trip all at once. I'll sit on Hold till I can talk to a human.

gilfiom

Just to report back, I flew GLA - LHR - MEX last week on seperate PNR's and was checked through to Mexico without a word from me. So it appears a patchy implementation of the rules or perhaps some softening, which depends on status/ routes/ cabin.

Good old BA!

rapidex

One thing BA excels at is inconsistency.

Calchas

Not always.

daniellam

Here is my theory.

Somehow the "automatically find connections" feature in Amadeus Altea (DCS) got turned on. With this feature turned on, the system automatically crawls and searches for check-in records (Customer Record in Amadeus terminology) that it thinks are candidates for getting merged as they may belong to the same "customer".

Amadeus Altea is designed on the basis of serving "the customer" as opposed to "a single booking" (this is contrary to BA's philosophy where you are looked at as "just another booking" as opposed to a customer).

There usually has to be some sort of key identifying information in each booking that are are common across bookings for merging to automatically occur. For example, the passenger name (SMITH/JOHN MR and SMITH/JOHN are seen as two different passengers and won't automatically be merged) must match exactly on both bookings, API information such as date of birth, passport number, full name etc. much match exactly before automatically merging.

Sometimes when the system is unsure whether to merge the check-in records (eg. due to different FF numbers, name too common etc.), it prompts the agent for manual intervention. In this case, check-in agents would have automatically answered "no" when the system asks "do you want to merge?".

While in other cases, the the check-in records may have already been automatically merged when the check-in agent goes into it and is not aware the check-in record is a result of two or more records being merged.

Calchas

It seems a bit unwise that the records get automatically merged.

I wonder if anyone did any statistics on the frequency of record collisions between two different passengers whose identities randomly coincide. You can imagine among certain common names, particularly in certain places in the world, it could be relatively common. I suppose the difficulty of trying to get her these statistics would be determining what was a collision (of two different people) and what was a valid merge (probably a rare event anyway). But I think you could get a fair estimate by merging across ignoring one variable (such as date of birth) and then seeing how many of those merges would have failed if the DoB had been taken into account (adjusting for the a priori probability of two DoBs randomly coinciding), and then repeating over other variables, to get an estimate of the relative contribution of uncertainty from each field.

Actually sounds like quite a fun project....

sammyg901

Usually you would use some form of unique identifier or key - in an airline case an FF number or a passport no. should do the trick alongside something like DOB for extra safety.

As an aside, this is something I am involved with in a different industry. In the UK this is pretty challenging as we don't have an identity card number that we commonly capture. Across our sprawling estate of systems you can "exist" many times without us being sure we are looking at the same person. We are undertaking a huge exercise (including eyeballing 1000s of records in the worst cases) to merge these records.

Luckily I've moved to Asia where we capture a unique ID number in all the markets we operate in, so a far more simple proposition

Calchas

Neither of these are guaranteed to be consistent across multiple PNRs (people can have several passports and several FQTV numbers, and none need be associated with a booking) but I appreciate it would significantly reduce the error rate.

KermitDK

This threat has so far been regarding baggage only.
I think a key reason why this policy was enforced were due to rebookings/ compensation. Example:

Seperat tickets AMS LHR and LHR LAX both BA
2 tickets = 2 contracts

If AMS to LHR gets delayed BA is not required to assist with rebooking to LAX as the tickets are seperated. In case the next LAX flight will depart the next day BA saves money for hotel and compensation according to EU 261 as BA is not responsible despite the passenger has/had a ticket on BA out of LHR.

If AMS through checks the passenger all the way the passenger might claim BA for assisting if he/she misconnects in LHR.

I'm sure baggagehandling is the less issue with this policy.

UKtravelbear

JayeJ

Except that you can't book a reward flight with a paid flight... apparently rare, I know, I know, except for others like me. I'm dealing with it.

Often1

It's not just BA. AA does as well. While EC 261/2004 does apply to departures from the EU for AA, the scenario AMS-LHR-JFK where the first segment's delay causes a delay to the second segment triggering Type 3 rather than Type 1 compensation won't happen to AA because it does not (may not) operate the initial short-hop which causes this problem.

Moreover, unlike BA and almost all other carriers, AA does rebook across separate AA-AA, AA-OW, and OW-AA tickets. While the COC provision offered by AA is not protection in the full sense, one does get rebooked, which is an awful lot better that having the onwards ticket cancelled.

Nonetheless, AA will not check bags across tickets, even AA-AA.

gengar

This isn't right - historically, protection has been separate from checking through luggage. (And it still is, on *A and other carriers that allow for luggage check-through.)

Plenty of examples given already in this thread.

KermitDK

I will still claim that it's due to economy But we all have different options

windowontheAside

By 'economy' do you mean you think they are doing it to save money? I don't think anyone would disagree with you there.

(Although this is FT where people seem to be able to disagree on anything and everything ...)