Rossodio

Though I will be traveling primarily for leisure in May to Italy, while there, may pick up some samples and items from Italian stores to bring back for business purposes (could be as simple as fabric samples and as expensive as jewelery/accessories). Looking for where to find rules on exactly what and how much I could bring back home (by value, quantity, weight, or category) without having to declare with customs or endure the associated lines and waits involved with customs etc.

Semi-relatedly, will likely be flying into LHR T3 on the way back and transferring to T5 airside for the flight heading back to JFK before ending in CLT. For the LHR T5->T3 transfer will I need to pick my bags up and re-check them? Flight to LHR and leaving LHR that day are both BA. (edit: this has been answered; please see first question above)

Microwave

If your transit of LHR is on the same ticket, you won't need to collect bags, or clear immigration / customs. You will have transit security.

Microwave

As the semi-related question about LHR transit has been answered, I'm going to shift the thread to the Practical Travel Safety and Security Issues forum for discussion of your questions about the customs implications and intricacies of bringing business samples back to the USA. I'll also update the thread's title to more accurately reflect its contents once it arrives the destination forum.

~Microwave
AAdvantage forum co-moderator

AirborneLocksmith

Traveling with Samples (CBP)

Form 6059B Customs Declaration - English (Fillable) (Item 14: "I have (We have) commercial merchandise: (articles for sale, samples used for soliciting orders, or goods that are not considered personal effects)")

Rossodio

Different record locator but same itinerary/trip, supposedly. I originally was booked on a different flight out of LHR but it got changed by the airline and then I called the airline to get it changed again. Never had to make an entirely new booking, though. Assuming that what you said still applies?

platbrownguy

The terminology matters here. There's no such thing as a "trip" or "itinerary" -- there are tickets and record locators, and it sounds like you have separate tickets with separate locators. So you will need to enter the UK, get your bags, take them landside to T3, and check them in there again.

AirborneLocksmith

Agreed.
Since both flights are on BA, having different record locators strongly indicates separate tickets. If it were, say, a BA flight followed by an AA flight, you’d have separate BA and AA record locators even if both flights were on the same ticket.

Rossodio

Oh boy... so my ticket has become pretty complex since I booked it. I feel that I should flesh all of this out more in the hopes that I can get clarity on when, where, and how I will need to pick bags up, go through customs, go through security, check back in, etc... in LHR outbound, in NAP, in LHR inbound, in JFK, or in CLT...??? Also looking to make sure I have safely lengthy layovers to not have a high risk of missing a flight. Further, if bringing back samples for business purposes would lengthen any of these steps, I would like to know as well. Here is a summary of my journey to the current ticketing that I have and how I got here.

Originally booked in November using an agent over the phone a multi-city itinerary for 2 people on a single booking. It is multi-city because AA metal does not fly to Naples, Italy. My original booking was:
CLT->DFW->LHR all AA, LHR->NAP on BA.
NAP->LHR on BA. LHR->MIA->CLT on AA. Layover in LHR was fairly tight originally.
I could access all of these legs using a single record locator, though to see my BA seat assignments I had to use BA's record locator and go through their website.

The initial booking the agent screwed up and put my name as Dr. Rossodio as opposed to Rossodio which (no pun intended) won't fly with international tickets. I had to get the name changed on the ticket with an agent and when I did so, the booking had to be split into two AA record locators (now with two BA record locators to access my LHR<->NAP seat assignments, etc.).

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that a change had been made to my return flight. the LHR->MIA had moved to an earlier time, not allowing enough time for baggage transfer at LHR. The itinerary changed to NAP->LHR on BA and then direct LHR->CLT on AA. However, it was a J class ticket where I had originally "paid" (award ticket) and was booked for a flagship first ticket. F service was not available on any AA flight returning at that time... so I called the AA agent and had them change my return flight from NAP->LHR->CLT to NAP->LHR->JFK->CLT. The LHR->JFK is a BA flight with AA codeshare used to book it and we are in F on that flight.

By doing this, another BA record locator number for each passenger was generated just for the LHR->JFK leg.

So there are now 6 record locators... 3 pairs - one for myself and one for the other passenger. When AA accesses the AA record locator for either of us, all of the flights do pull up in their system as being a part of the same trip. When I get into the AA app or aa.com and pull the AA record locator for either passenger, I can see the dates/times for all of the flights, both BA and AA, on the same reservation (there are 6 flights I can swipe through on the app after clicking on a single reservation):
- One pair of AA record locators which covers CLT->DFW->LHR along with JFK->CLT (I can change seats on any of those legs at aa.com using these record locators).
- One pair of BA record locators which covers LHR->NAP and NAP->LHR. When I access this at ba.com I can see all of the other flights (both AA and the LHR->JFK) are there, but I cannot edit or see seats on any of those.
- One pair of BA record locators which covers LHR->JFK. When I access this at ba.com I can see all of the other flights (both AA and the LHR<->NAP) are there, but I cannot edit or see seats on any of those.
- Interestingly, when I call BA and give them my record locators for the LHR<->NAP legs, they claim that the BA flight from LHR->JFK is "an American Airlines flight" and cannot see the seat assignment. When I have them pull up the BA locator for the LHR->JFK leg it pulls up, however.

Layovers;
Outbound at DFW ~3hrs
Outbound at London ~6.5hrs
Inbound at London ~2h5m (likely will have to go from T3 to T5 to transfer here)
Inbound at JFK 3hrs exactly

Again see my first paragraph above to see the pertinent questions I am looking for help with. I certainly don't want to get stuck or tied down anywhere due to not following the right procedure, and want to make sure I have a reasonable amount of time to get to the gate at each stop. If a good case can be made that bringing samples back will delay things substantially then I can convince my travel partner to perhaps consider not picking any samples up while there.

IluvSQ

Regarding the samples, as someone who has spent many hours at US preclearances mutilating ( cutting with scissors )
fabric samples that were painstakingly well documented and declared, I would suggest not carrying them and instead have them
sent by mail/Fedex. I am not sure if the rules will be different at MIA, but make sure you have every T crossed and I dotted.
The only times I was permitted to bring samples into the US was when I was in direct transit to another country.

ralfkrippner

I have taken samples a few times visiting a US business partner. I always decided to declare them versus risk to "get" a misdemeanor into my files and have problems upon imigration for the next 20 years... My samples have always been with a zero material value which was well documented and quite obvious. I was always sent to secondary and waited 15 to 120 minutes before having to show samples and documents and then a few minutes later got released. I don't think that this will be as easy with samples of value like jewelry. I would expect that you would have to document bringing such items out of the country again and might even have to pay a refundable customs amount. So if there is an alternative form of sending the goods you will at least save some time and hassle by not bringing them personally through customs.