I'm on a complex itinerary across multiple *A airlines and the last two legs are SFO-AKL on United this evening (2 Feb) and then AKL-SYD with ANZ on 4 Feb.

Having trouble getting the BP issued for the AKL-SYD flight and the ANZ desk at SFO say that it's because a passport check is needed at AKL. If we'd been flying SFO-AKL-SYD with ANZ they would have been able to issue the BP for the last leg. Apparently the sticking point is that we're coming in on United. We were told that we have to proceed to the departure gate in AKL and the gate agents will issue the BP.


Does this sound about right?

Yep sounds right.

AirNZ needs to do the passport check in their system so they know they are carrying landable people. If they carry unlandable people they get a fine from border agencies.

Not all airlines have full interoperability in passing on passport check requirements.

That's fine, thanks! Just wanted a sense check as the person on the desk wasn't confident and I didn't want to turn up in AKL and be stuck.

I have a NZeTA for the return leg so I am hopefully landable.

NZ is one of the stricter airlines when it comes to passport checks.

If even if you check-in online with NZ you still have to valid your passport at a kiosk or with a staff member at the airport. If you don�t they will page you at the gate before boarding to have your passport validated.


NZ also has a transit desk at AKL, that you can collect your boarding pass at if you want it before you for the gate. Go past the Mc Donlands in Departures, and it�s on the left hand side.

Thank you, really helpful information, much appreciated.

Quick update: on arrival into AKL, went to the transfer desk and waited, and waited. We had about 90 mins to departure once through transfer security. One person on the desk dealing with a couple of lads with a BP issue, then two more groups of people waiting ahead of us. Another person joined the desk to help but kept being radioed to go to a gate to deal with boarding an upcoming flight. I don't know if the 1 hour check in cut off was going to apply and the clock was very definitely ticking.

The original desk agent gave up with the lads and handed it over to the new person before leaving to go to do the flight boarding job. As they left they said "if you're needing a BP for NZ105 then head to gate 15, which is a good 15 min walk away". So off we schlepped to gate 15 where the very nice chap said he had no idea why the check in agent in SFO was unable to print the BPs. Fortunately we were departing from gate 16 or else I would have been immensely annoyed at being required to trek around the airport looking for someone to check us in and print the BP.

On the way back, SYD-AKL, the check in agent wouldn't check us in for anything past AKL. This was less contentious as we had a 23h layover but I would have been quite stressed if I'd had the same 90 mins that we burned rather rapidly on out the outbound.

We flew BKK-SIN-AKL-WLG 16-17 Feb, with first sector on SQ under an NZ codeshare.

Annoyingly, unable to OLCI on the NZ app/online at any stage, and SQ app only allowed OLCI for BKK-SIN.

At BKK we could check in for all flights and get BPs.

I prefer to complete OLCI really only to signal to the airlines that we are travelling and hopefully avoid any risk of being bumped - especially on fully sold flights (as these were).

Any ideas why this is?

I think it might have something todo with NZ own in-house reservation systems limitations. It defiantly doesn�t play to nicely on the inter airline front. When you compare it to an off the shelf product, it has its limitations.

As a general rule Air NZ won't interline for standalone tickets except for some situations where they will for their own Airpoints Elite passengers.

What does interline mean?

There are passenger baggage cargo interline agreements which are more extensive than the usual alliance and co-op partners. So they can actually have your bags tagged through on separate tickets. I flew Air NZ to Singapore then Qatar onwards. After I sent my baggage through I got talking to one of the agents and they were like.... yeah we could have tagged your bags through SIN and onto QR so I didn't need to pick it up in SIN. Would have been nice but not a big deal as they had some 24hr check in at SIN for a bunch of airlines and I'd left loads of time between flights.

My understanding is that it is a bit more subtle than how NZbutterfly describes.

IATA defines �interline� as follows:

IATA Reference

A key point is that just because carrier X and carrier Y have an interline agreement, doesn�t mean all aspects are �enabled�. Most commonly, in cases of a single journey on multiple carriers the marketing carrier will utilise interline agreements to ensure the customer�s luggage is managed throughout the journey, with the marketing carrier effectively sub-contracting the services it cannot meet itself - including responsibilities for sorting things out when they go wrong.

In the case of a customer holding separate tickets (say carrier X AAA-BBB, then carrier Y BBB-CCC), then the presence of an interline agreement between X and Y (for baggage handling) is less relevant/binding as the customer has two, seperate journeys with each of the carriers concerned. Indeed, carrier Y expects the customer to originate from BBB and not AAA. And why would carrier X want responsibility for luggage transfer to carrier Y when the customer is not even buying sector BBB-CC from them?

Some carriers are, however, quite generous and will interline luggage on separate tickets. But our own AirNZ will typically refuse to interline to itself on separate NZ tickets!