BER Customs Question
 

Hi all.
I'm flying into Brandenburg (very exciting) in August with Delta. I have a connection in CDG (whole trip with Delta - JFK - CDG - BER). My final destination is Croatia. I'm spending 2 days/nights on the back end of my trip in Berlin and want to avoid spending my first night there too (also saves me some money in other ways). Assuming I get to BER on time (big assumption with JFK and CDG), will the 4 hours between my Delta arrival and my EasyJet departure be enough time to deplane, clear customs, and get to the departure gate in time? I think it will be. I posted in the France forum with the more important question - will I make my CDG transfer and even make it to Berlin in time?!?
I knew Brandenburg isn't operating yet, but in general...
Thank you.

4 hours should be plenty at BER. You´ll allready have done passportcontrol when you connect at CDG. When you arrive at BER you´ll have to pick up your luggage from the belts and will pass through a customs check point to get landside. But as they only do spot checks most likely you´ll be able to walk right through without even slowing down.

I've read your other post as well, and I would say that your itinerary is relatively low-risk. Your connection at CDG has more than an hour's leeway, and four hours at BER is plenty.

However, despite it being a low-risk connection I would still recommend that you take out travel insurance, and that you look for a policy which includes missed connections, so that you are covered in case something goes wrong and you miss your connection at CDG. I can remember three occasions (over a period of about ten years) when I was on long-haul flights that were delayed by a couple of hours or more; it's rare, but it can happen.

btw. The airport is "Berlin Brandenburg" because it serves the German states of Berlin and Brandenburg
The airport itself is actually in the state of Brandenburg which surrounds the city state of Berlin.

To be really pedantic, the airport's full name is now "Berlin Brandenburg Airport Willy Brandt" but this name does not seem to be very popular yet.

I would say, it is doable. I hope Berlin Brandeburg is running and the usual problems after an opening of an airport are solved at this time.

The only problem you might run into is, if you luggage does not make it in CDG to BER, as I doubt they will sent it to Croatia. As far as I know there is no interline agreement with DL / AF and Easy Jet, but maybe someone knows better, which would solve this problem.

Why shouldn't they send it to Croatia?

When baggage gets lost it's the airline's responsibility to send it to wherever the passenger is at the time it is found... whether it's five minutes from the airport, five hours from the airport or the other side of the world. It's not uncommon for people to travel from A to B to C using different airlines or other modes of transport; airlines send on baggage to other towns and countries all the time.

(I had no problem getting my baggage sent from Detroit to Ottawa some years ago, despite having made the journey by train myself. And I've heard of other cases where baggage was sent on over hundreds or thousands of miles)

Because the airline's responsibility is to get it to Berlin, not Croatia. The bags would be waiting for the OP at the airport luggage office at Berlin.

This is what a friend experienced a couple of month ago. He had to cancel a separate booked flight, because his luggage misconnected. As there were no interline agreement, the airline refused to send it to his final destination and made the valid point, that is not within their responsibility, that he had a separate ticket to another place. You might be lucky to get the luggage in the region around the airport but this would not cover Croatia or Italy.

Of course it is ymmv ...

If this was the case then why don't airlines make passengers return to the airport to collect their delayed bags, instead of delivering them to the passenger's final destination?

Under the Montreal Convention airlines are liable for up to SDR 1000 per passenger in case of delayed bags - that's 1173 Euro at today's rate of exchange. This will easily cover the cost of sending a bag from Berlin to the passenger's final destination, whether it's Potsdam, Leipzig or Croatia.

The OP has a contract with DL/AF to fly and transport his/her baggage from New York to Berlin. He has another completely separate contract with Easyjet to do the same between Berlin and Croatia. When the passenger's bags arrive in Berlin, DL/AF is basically done with their end of the bargain (until the return flight when the process starts all over again). As for why they deliver them to you when bags are delayed, that I don't know. However, my own experiences with delayed luggage and international connections did include returning to the airport and finding my luggage.

I had flown from New York to Brussels via London on BA (this was right after the liquid restrictions for carry-ons came into effect). My carry-on backpack was fine for the JFK-LHR flight, but at Heathrow a BAA employee saw my carrying it, made me put it in a sizing basket, and told me I'd have to go to check it in at a check-in counter. Mind you, my connection was departing in about 1 1/2 hours. I had to clear immigration (no check-in counters airside), clear UK customs, get to a check-in desk (Heathrow was a flippin' madhouse that morning due to a variety of problems), cut my way to the front of a security line (I'm still grateful to the long line of British travelers who graciously allowed me to bypass them in the ridiculous security line) and run to my flight as the doors were closing.

When I landed at Brussels, you guessed it-neither of my bags (my originally checked bag and my LHR surprise check) had made the flight from London. Now I'm in Brussels with only the clothes on my back. While BA did give me a travel pack with some toiletries and did reimburse me months later for some clothing I had to purchase, they did nothing else for me. I had to return to BRU the following day as my luggage still hadn't showed up at the hotel, walk into the baggage claim area and find my luggage and clear customs with it myself. There was a boatload of unaccompanied bags at BRU and BA or their luggage handling agents were making no effort to get any bags to any hotels. This may be due to each bag having to clear customs, and them not wanting to be responsible for a bag full of drugs, or it could just be that they were lazy. However, it is my belief that DL/AF will make no extraordinary effort to reunite a bag with a passenger outside of the city that they have flown into on a DL/AF ticket, particularly when it involves legalities such as clearing customs. (That is one small plus of the US system of clearing customs at your first port of entry, while you are completing immigration formalities. At least you know your luggage made it into the country.)

etch5895, what you are describing is not how it should be, and I am talking both from personal experience and as someone who has previously worked for an airline (in an all-round customer service capacity which included dealing with delayed baggage)

My baggage has been delayed on many many occasions over the years, and not once was I made to return to the airport and pick it up and take it through customs myself.

When my baggage misconnects on the way home it is always delivered to my house which is 60 miles from the nearest airport. I've had baggage delivered to me over similar distances in Germany (and remember chatting to the driver on one such occasion, and being told that his next call was a further 100 km away from the airport). I've had baggage delivered from DTW to my friends' house in Ottawa, without anyone at DTW batting an eyelid when I asked for the baggage to be sent on to Canada.

If your bag misconnects it's the airline's responsibility to get it to you wherever you are at the time they find it, as long as it doesn't cost them more than 1000 Special Drawing Rights to get it to you. If you happen to be 500 miles from your original arrival airport, regardless of how you got there, your bag will have to travel those 500 miles at the expense of the airline that should have delivered it to you at your original arrival airport (i.e., AF in the OP's case - not DL. Baggage delivery is the responsibility of the last airline). If an airline tries to tell you differently they are just wrong, and you should stand your ground and remind them of their obligations under the Montreal Convention.

I'm glad to hear that your baggage mishaps worked out well. I'd still be very surprised if any AF employee at the Berlin airport forwarded a bag to Croatia when it was not part of the original ticketed itinerary, and with a non-interlining airline. Maybe they would fly it back to Paris and put it on one of AF's flights into Zagreb. My fear is that if they tried something like this, it would take many days for the bag(s) to arrive in Croatia, possibly even arriving after the OP leaves.

In my situation above, my trip was a quick, long weekend trip and I didn't really have time to fool around and hope that the airline finally got around to delivering it. I'm sure they would have eventually; do the airlines have a certain number of days that they need to reunite you with your bags? As I said, there was absolutely no effort being made in BRU to move any of the bags that were piling up.

I would like to say that CDG has their you-know-what together, but it is the only other airport in Europe that I've had a baggage foul up (albeit a minor one). Picture this: A direct AF flight from Philadelphia to Paris. Easy, right? So I'm waiting at baggage claim, and no bag. I go to the baggage office and start a trace. I sit down for a few minutes. A lady comes out and says "Sir, Your bag was routed onto our afternoon flight to Bangalore, we're pulling it from the flight now". 30 minutes or so later, I've got my bag. As I suspected, the luggage tag said CDG in big letters.

They don't have any choice in the matter - they have to forward it to Croatia. How they forward it is up to them - they could use DHL, for example - but the Montreal Convention is quite clear on this. If an airline fails to reunite a passenger with their luggage at the end of their journey then they have to deliver it to him no matter where he happens to be.

The contract is to deliver the baggage to the customer, at the arrival airport, at the end of their journey. If they are unable to keep to that contract (i.e., if the bag misconnects) then the Montreal Convention kicks in and the bag has to be forwarded to the passenger wherever he is, subject only to a maximum cost of SDR 1000.


No (because this obviously depends on how soon the bag is found and how far it has to be forwarded), but the Montreal Convention does say something along the lines of "by the fastest possible means" or "as quickly as possible".

(It's a while since I last looked at the text, so I'm unsure about the precise wording, but there is definitely something in there along those lines. I know this because I was, at the time, having an argument with KLM about their switch to a slower courier company that only works Mondays to Fridays. I won the argument, they switched back to same-day delivery!)

Sorry to hear about your hassles at BRU and CDG!

Which is precisely what they normally do, at least when it's outside their main hubs.

This isn't just a N.A./Europe thing either. I know people who have had delayed bags delivered to them in Poland too.

BER Customs Question
 

Yes, thank you, I know the full name is Berlin Brandenburg, etc, etc, etc.

To all others, wow. I didn't check the forum in a few days and was surprised to find all of these replies. They are interesting, but hopefully not applicable, as my luggage will be traveling with me as carry-on :cool:

Last note, I'm looking at trip insurance, specifically for missed connection coverage. I'm calling Allianz and Travel Insured tomorrow. Any other recommendations? Thank you all.