My wife and I have a multi stop ticket SFO>Munich>Prague, return Munich>SFO. We booked this itinerary with Lufthansa, but the SFO>MUC leg is code shared with United. It’s all on one booking reference, and the outbound flight includes the bags checked through to Prague with a three hour layover in Munich.

We have three checked bags, two of which contains ski equipment that we won’t need in Prague. We are going to make our way back to Munich over the course of 8-9 days by a train with a few different stops along the way.

In a perfect world, we would collect our bags upon arrival in Munich in T2 and take two of them to the baggage storage area also in T2 and pay a few euros per day to leave them there for the eight days until we arrive back. We are then traveling by coach to go skiing.

apparently, we need to pick up our bags at passport control, and take them and recheck them for the onward flight.

My question is whether or not we’ll be allowed to take two of them out, take them through customs, and then come back in through passport control, and continue on our way.

thank you in advance for any thoughts tips or suggestions. And happy new year.

1) your bags will be checked through to Prague unless you ask fir them to be short-checked
2) immigration is inbound Munich only, MUC-PRG is within Schengen
3) but if you pick up the MUC bags (assuming you manage to get them short-checked) and leave them in storage,you will have to reclear security

Sounds like you will be starting on United? Unless your layover in MUC is overnight or >12hr, United will not allow you to short check your bags. There's a thread about United's policy here: UA will not Short Check bags (but some loopholes)
Unlike when you fly into the US, when you fly into schengen you will go through passport control at the first schengen airport but won't take your bags through customs until your final destination.

If you can't convince a UA agent to short-check, you could probably insist on getting your bags back at MUC, but it will take longer than your 3 hour layover.

If possible you could try and change your itinerary to have a night stop in MUC

Thanks, all, for your replies and input. You were right about UA refusing the short-check. That’s a concept I was unfamiliar with until reading threads about it here before I posted this. Good to know. It would’ve been so easy for me to just book the SFO>MUC>SFO on one itinerary and MUC>Prague separately and that would’ve solved the whole thing. Probably wouldn’t have cost me much more anyways - was trying to be too efficient I guess.

Tomorrow train leg one commences, replete with ski gear schlepping. Lesson learned.

Thanks, all, for your input.