lupine

I gave up on Continental after I waited for their callback for three hours, and am hoping some nice FT person could instead help.

D is doing an internship in Uganda this summer. Her itinerary, arranged by the student travel agency, has her outbound:

PHX-EWR ticketed on United, codeshared and run by Continental
EWR-Brussels listed as Lufthansa, codeshared and run by Continental
Brussels - Entebbe listed as Lufthansa, codeshared and run by "SN Brussels Airlines"

1. I understand that because the first metal she's flying on is Continental, that it is their baggage rules that control on the outbound segment -- but the chart provided at
http://www.continental.com/CMS/en-US...edBaggage.aspx
covers every destination region EXCEPT Africa. So, what allowance applies?

2. Her first flight is set for departure at 6:45 a.m. on a Wednesday. Continental's rules say she has to have her bags checked in at least 60 minutes before departure for an international flight -- or 30 minutes for a domestic, not that I have any desire to see her cut it that close. Continentals website also says that peak hour delays to clear security in PHX can be two hours, and they show peak starting at 6:30 AM. What time does Continental begin accepting luggage for check-in, and how early would you suggest she get to PHX to be safe?

3. I think she has an old OnePass account, which she hasn't used in years, ditto on a similar Lufthansa account, and she also has a United account with some miles still on it (mostly flies Southwest these days) -- given all the codesharing mentioned above, does she have choices about which program the miles go on? (Coming back her flight starts nominally on Lufthansa, operated by Swiss Air, so similar questions on that front.)

Any and all help would be much appreciated. This one got way beyond my pay grade.

Fishbait

Not sure if this will help, but I had some questions about an upcoming SN flight's baggage allowances and found that this page speaks specifically about allowances for partners when paired with a SN flight to Africa (scroll down for the specifics).

http://www.brusselsairlines.com/en_u...spx?item=23740

It might confuse you more or help, but hopefully someone else will post more specific answers.

Robin

kwildnj

A) Baggage

My best interpretation on multi-carrier itineraries is as follows:

You go on the originating carrier's rules for the segments that are to be flown on that carrier. In her case, you would go by the CO rules for travel to Europe, as that is the extent of your CO travel. I could be wrong, but this seems to make sense.

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B) Check-In @ PHX

Given she has an extensive travel day ahead of her, and missing her first flight could delay her trip by a day (or more), I'd play it safe, and plan on getting her to the airport in the 5:00 - 5:15 range. If she ends up sitting at the gate in PHX for an hour, its better than being stuck in EWR or Brussels for hours or days.

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C) Mileage

As you indicated she doesn't fly *A too often, I'd stick with one single program throughout her journey. Since you indicated she has some UA miles, I would suggest having miles credited to her UA MileagePlus account.

Why you might ask? UA miles are known to expire with no activity, and this trip will keep her small amount of UA miles "active". Even if she has CO miles, they don't expire, and the UA and CO miles will combine at the end of this year anyway.

Her outbound trip is roughly 10,000 miles, I'd presume her return to be around the same. That said, if she should fly 5000 miles domestically on UA, CO, or even US, she'd be Silver on the Combined CO/UA come next year. She'd also earn herself a free domestic ticket.

**I didn't think of this before, but make sure the itinerary she is flying is eligible for miles. Given it was booked through a "student" travel agency, makes me think some unpublished or discounted fares may come into play here, and she may not be able to earn miles.




Hope I've been of some help here.