LON on DONE4?
 

Hello.
Hope that I'm not wasting anyone's time, but this is a simple question, and I can't seem to find the answer in the ONE rules. An (admittedly brief) search of this forum doesn't seem to provide the answer either.
My question is, do all the London airports count as a single airport for the ONE rules? I am thinking of flying FRA-LCY in the evening and then LHR-MCT the next morning. (June 2007) Will LCY-LHR be counted as a separate land segment and so use up 1 segment, or will they count it as LON rather than two airports (as I gather they do for the NYC airports) and so not count it as a separate segment?
The reason for the FRA-LCY flight (rather than FRA-LHR) is that it has a good arrival time, and the travel time to the city seems to be much quicker for my brief overnight stay. And it's a way of avoiding at least one LHR experience.
Of course since BA has sold BA connect this may pose problems, but they are still listed as eligible affiliate.
(If I could rely on making the T1-T4 connection (FRA-LHR-MCT) in 85 minutes, this wouldn't be a problem, but because of the new baggage rules I'll have to check one bag, and the people at the BA forum seem to think that this would be a pretty risky connection, especially with checked luggage.)
Thanks,
Medicus

LCY, LGW, STN and LHR are usually all classed as part of one city (LON) for fare and ticketing purposes - there should be no issue of a land segment here.

BA will also be retaining their services from LCY in some form - they were not part of the BA Connect sale as far as I'm aware.

Since you are on a DONE4 you will have a J boarding pass on BA, allowing you to use the FCC FastTrack -- which takes 5 minutes instead of 1 hour+ in the regular line. There is no problem with 85 min connection T1 to T4 using FastTrack -- the problem is for those who aren't FastTrack eligible (and BA polices this ardently). BA Gold doesn't get FastTrack at the FCC, hence all the complaints on the BA forum. As for baggage making it, I've never had a bag miss a short connection (it will be tagged as SHORT in FRA).

Finally, the law is murky about whether overnight inter-airport transit qualifies for exemption from the APD and most airlines collect it, so that would add GBP 80 to the cost if you use LCY. It will be collected at LHR upon check-in if not already on your ticket.

And anyway, land segments don't count towards the total of 20 allowed on xONEn tickets - the limits is 20 flight coupons; you can have as many open jaws as you wish so long as you stay within the other rules.

Thanks for the responses.

It sounds as though I'd be better off doing the FRA-LHR-MCT connection (BA 901 to BA 073) in the morning and avoid potential complications of an overnight stay. Does anyone know how long before departure do you have to check in in FRA? I'll have one bag to check through to MCT and I'd prefer not to use the OLCI/bag drop option but actually see it tagged 'short' by the check in agent. I assume that there will be a separate J check in at FRA.

Thanks again.

At LHR I suspect that is another way of saying "tomorrow will do" :) Make sure you have 24-48 hours worth of essentials in your carry-on.

90 minutes is the norm on BA for J (and 2 hours for Y); you can check on ba.com under MMB to see the actual checkin limit for your ticket. BA is rather inefficient in FRA, I'm afraid, not one of their better airports. The 'short' tags really do seem to work, getting priority over other luggage, and I've never had a short tag miss a connection in dozens of attempts -- while I have had bags lost at LHR for several days more than once, but they were F tagged and not short tagged; F tags seem to mean "steal me first" at LHR.

My experience with "short"-tagged bags at LHR is the same as number_6's. I've done a lot of trips from AMS via LHR to various destinations on BA, all with the short tag on my luggage, and it's always made it to the same flights that I was on.

It will be a separate segment, however is of no issue since you are permitted 20 flight segments as part of the ATW ticket

Dave

The only time that land "segments" matter with xONExs is in e-ticketing; apparently the systems can handle up to 16 total "segments," be they flying or land, after which it's paper ticket city.

Is this true generally? I thought the 16 segment limit was something intrinsic to Sabre and AA, rather than an industry-wide hard limit. Suppose you have a 20 segment ticket with no AA flights at all, wouldn't that be e-ticktable? Or a 20 segment ticket with only four AA segments (meaning AA only sees those four in Sabre)?