All Nippon Airways to Delta in NRT
 

We are flying round trip to Japan. We fly into Tokyo and out from Osaka. By flying the Osaka to NRT on All Nippon on a separate ticket, we save over $200 each. Should we?

The All Nippon flight (NH 2176) leaves ITM at 7:45am and arrives NRT at 9:05am. Our Delta flight home doesn't leave until 3:40pm. We were told that as long as we show our DL boarding passes at ITM our bags will be interlined all the way home same as if we were on one ticket. NH2176 arrives in Terminal 1 and our flight home departs from Terminal 1.

What could go wrong on two tickets vs one. I guess NH2176 could get cancelled or delayed by four to six hours. That seems unlikely. If I can check luggage through, then one vs two tickets doesn't matter. If not, I'll have to retrieve and then recheck luggage. Is this likely to be an issue?

My big concern is the long layover. Any advice on how to keep the wife from shopping?

Not sure if NH will check your bags on separate tickets, but with such long layover I would not worry too much.

Are you sure you can not get the same flights on one ticket? I looked up random ITM-NRT flight and the the fare allowed END-ON-END combinations with Delta. If both NH and DL fares allow END-ON-END, you can get the same price on a single ticket (plus/minus taxes that maybe calculated differeny) You will need to call Delta or use multi-city option with OTA to get it ticketed.

Who told you that NH and DL interline luggage? Just curious, it isn't clear in the post.
Generally DL will not do this (See link below), but in your case you need NH to do this. I don't know their policy.
https://pro.delta.com/content/agency...e-policy-.html

Having flown domestically in Japan, the process is different than internationally. The ticket stock is different (see below), check-in process is different, PNR is a different style, etc. It can be a little confusing, and the English isn't always great for the domestic check-in agents. So, I can imagine a lot of difficulty if you asked for through-checked baggage.

Personally I would go for it, you understand the risk of a mis-connect as your largest concern (very low). Just collect your bags at NRT and re-check.

The only real risk is that your ITM-NRT flight gets canceled and you miss the DL longhaul. On separate tix you would have no protection. It's not a likely scenario, but it's possible.

Yeah that's going to be a problem at NRT. One of the better airports for duty free in the world.

My parents had no issues with NH through-checking their bags onto their connecting DL flight (separate ticket) when checking in at HND in April.

Narita town is only a few minutes away by train. Very nice place to visit for a few hours on a long layover. Do a Google search for "Narita town layover" and you'll get many ideas. For example:
https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/blog/l...ng-area-032717

That boarding pass is >10 years old -- they use QR codes nowadays.

There will be enough time to take the train after the departure time for the flight from ITM.

The age of the BP isn't very relevant to my point. It's just what I could find quickly online. They still look similar and very different to the international BP.

OP is checking bags and probably won't want to leave them behind in Japan.

NH will most likely interline the baggage to DL, but I doubt a boarding pass can be issued on NH.

I once had a client connect from HND to an AF flight from KIX to CDG -- different alliances, but the bags were tagged all the way to CDG. Simple.

NH and JL have international connection desks with specialists trained to deal with these sorts of connections at HND and KIX. OP will be fine.

Well the OP isn't flying through HND or KIX, or flying JL. So, not sure what you mean by that.

ITM handles entirely domestic flights. I'm sure they can handle the bag check-through to DL, but the likelihood of it being a bit more difficult than at international airports is fairly high. My experience at Japanese domestic-only airports is a small sample size, but I found English to be in limited supply.

True, but if you've checked in for the DL flight online and hand them the BP (or hand them your confirm if you haven't checked-in) and point to your bags, they'll probably get the point. In any event, I wouldn't worry too much about the bags given the length of the layover. Unless there's a very serious inbound delay, OP will have plenty of time to reclaim and recheck.