possible to check through luggage on 2 e-tickets?
 

i'm travelling SIN-LHR-DUB-EDI and DUB-LHR-SIN.

SIN-LHR-SIN is on a QF e-ticket.
LHR-xx-LHR is on a EI e-ticket.

is it possible to check through my luggage at SIN and DUB?

I've done that before, but you have to
convince the checkin agent to do it
right.

Once I had a hard time convincing the
checking agent at LCA, but I managed it somehow.

And we had a full squadron of BA people, managers included, refuse to do it on a CPT-LHR-SNN itin when LHR-SNN was on a separate ticket.

ouch!

In my case I had one Paper ticket and one e-ticket.

in another case, I had two e-tickets on QF, and they
let me do a thru checkin.
I checked in for the later flight along with the first segment.
(through an agent)

looks like it's hit and miss. sigh... i don't relish having to pick up the bags and re-check in again on top of changing terminals at LHR.

didn't OW announce in some PR blurb about all alliance partners interline enabled? is that just a ticketing thing?

It is a BA thing, another case of BA yet again refusing to abide by their contractual obligations in an attempt to inconvenience pax who choose to fly a competitor on a route served by BA. There are too many instances of this to be a mistake; it is clearly policy, to ensure you buy a BA ticket next time (or never fly BA again). Presumably your QF ticket is flying QF metal, in which case you have no problem, QF is happy to interline with EI at LHR. If you are on a QF codeshare on BA metal, then they won't accept the baggage. In any case be sure to have the ticket number for the EI ticket with you when checking in at SIN.

yes, i'm flying QF metal. thank goodness - i almost chose a BA flight on the SIN-LHR route.

BA's official policy is that they will through check luggage even on different tickets as long as:
1) onward flight is a OW flight
2) onward flight is same day
3) the connection is within airport minimum connect time.

There seems to be more and more evidence that BA does not always do this anymore.

The "different tickets" part seems to have an unstated disclaimer "as long as it isn't on a competitor". If same PNR, no problem interlining (obviously), but if separate PNRs BA seems to view it as a favour and not a part of the contract of carriage, thus the hit and miss experience with interlining. BA has adopted several such strange tendencies in the past year. Really deplorable as these are minor matters which don't involve much revenue or cost and create a smudge on the airline, besmirching its many admirable qualities. In aggregate it really does a lot of damage to BA, particularly when they publish different rules on the website than they actually implement, and dismiss pax who provide printouts of the rules from ba.com as "these aren't our procedures, sir, we don't publish them on the web". I guess ba.com isn't really part of the airline, at least in the minds of some employees.

I haven't had any problem getting AA to do this when I had 2 different e-tickets whether both were on AA or one was on AA and one on BA. However, BA absolutely would not do it with one ticket on BA and one on AA.

Would BA grant an exception for those who cannot get out of the airport due to lack of visa at LHR?

Also I noticed orbitz selling tickets with one leg on BA and the other not on a OW carrier, I think it was VS or BD. Would they refuse to through check it even if it was on one ticket?

Single PNR/ticket = not an issue, baggage is always through-checked. The problem is with separate tickets. BA is taking a hard line, basically to get pax to stop buying separate tickets and buy that single ticket (on the premise that this will be more revenue to BA -- almost certainly true, that is the usual reason for a separate ticket). If you cannot reach your baggage for whatever reason, it will go into the lost luggage office at LHR (never to be seen again -- as attested by those mountains of bags piled up at various places, visible from the buses between terminals). Basically not a good idea to be flying on separate tickets when you don't have admission rights to the country in the middle (technically BA can refuse to carry you to LHR and deny boarding for not having the correct visa, as the separate ticket is not proof that you will stay in transit). I suspect your hypothetical example of lacking a visa can never happen as boarding will be denied.

Without a visa one can't get out of LHR so the risk of a person getting into london when using two tickets is zero. Assuming there was some way of doing the above even on a single ticket one can easily do it, you just don't board the next flight. Boarding is denied when a person who's country requires a transit visa does not have a transit visa.

Your comments are correct for a single ticket. When it is 2 separate tickets, the first airline is not obligated to verify the validity of the 2nd ticket and can treat the pax as O/D and not in transit at the destination ... requiring all of the appropriate documentation for entry into the destination airport, LHR in your example. Never mind that the pax swears they are in transit. This is the downside to having separate tickets. The airlines often treat them as one ticket, as a courtesy, but it isn't a right or contractually enforcable. Most of the time it doesn't matter, but your example illustrates the danger of using separate tickets. I've never had visa problems, but I have run into missed connections and subsequent problems with the 2nd ticket that were my problem rather than the problem of the airline that caused the delay. So it isn't an academic consideration, these problems happen some percentage of the time (admittedly very low).