alany611

My fiancee has 3 separate tickets since the middle one is an award redemption for ANA first class from LAX to NRT. She will ask the UA agents to check my luggage through from IAH-LAX (UA), LAX-NRT (ANA), NRT-BKK (ANA). Would they also be able to issue the ANA boarding passes at this time? We've ensured that the connection time at each airport meets the MCT. Thanks in advanced!

IAH-OIL-TRASH

Should be able to check through to NRT, but youu might run into trouble getting UA checking bag through to BKK on two separate ANA tickets.

restlessinRNO

With three separate tickets, I am not sure UA will be able to print ANA BPs. Your fiancée would not meet the criteria for entering Japan, so ANA would need to recognize that she is a transit pax, connecting in NRT. 😊

PTahCha

UA can check the bags through to BKK - just need to present printed itinerary for the ANA legs. Allow extra time to do so, since they need to do this manually.

UA will not be able to issue boarding passes for ANA flights. The passenger can use the connecting corridor and walk to Tom Bradley terminal and check-in at the gate, or exit security, take the interterminal bus to Bradley terminal, and check-in at the ANA desk. Make sure to present baggage tags so the check-in agent can enter the baggage tag information into their system.

jsloan

That's my read as well. I find advance boarding passes fairly overrated; ANA would probably want to reprint them anyway, and they'd definitely want to know the bag tag numbers. The only reason I can think of to worry about this is probably the right one: if OP's fiancée were trying to access the *A lounge prior to ANA staff arriving, I'm not sure she'd be able to get in with just a printed itinerary.

alany611

Well, my fiancée tried to get them to check through to BKK and they said they couldn't because she isn't platinum status. I wasn't there, but my fiancée is soft spoken and I feel like they took advantage of her not pushing the issue so they wouldn't have to do a little more work. In all of my research about checking luggage through I've never seen status getting mentioned except for cases where they went way above and beyond the policy.

It's not the end of the world, but it will be a hassle for her to get the luggage at lax and haul it to the international terminal. My understanding is the inter-terminal shuttle only runs between terminals 2-3 and TB.

fumje

Totally ridiculous. Through-checking is not a status benefit.

Sorry she got brushed off. LAX does have a curbside shuttle that goes to all terminals, which should be found on the lower level (where bags claimed). I might personally walk instead, but if the bag is heavy that could be preferable. Hope she has better luck getting NH to do things properly. (I expect she should.)

jsloan

Please have her contact United after the flight to complain. There’s absolutely no requirement to be Platinum in order to check through onto a separate ticket.

WineCountryUA

The double set of separate tickets may have been an issue. The policy is explicit interlining just to a second ticket. There have been report that if trying things outside of the policy Gold/Plat/1K (in various different reports) might received non-policy interlining. But don't remember a prior three ticket query.

Which a three separate ticket case might be considered outside the policy which refers to just a second ticket.

See the thread's wiki for the older statement
today it states
"a separate" ticket, multiple separate tickets are not mentioned either way.

I would suspect a 3-ticket combo is moderately rare

jsloan

I doubt that the agents were engaging in sophisticated linguistic analysis. I suspect they just misunderstood/misapplied the policy.

Honestly, if that were the issue, and they’d offer to tag the bag to NRT, that likely would have been good enough. Once ANA got the bag in their possession, I suspect they’d have had no issues re-tagging the bag to BKK at LAX. The only fly in the ointment would be that it’s risky due to current entry requirements to Japan; if they weren’t able to re-tag her bag, I’m not sure how she’d have gotten it at NRT to re-check it there — but, again, she was flying NH F. Even if she hadn’t been able to get it retagged at LAX, when she was met upon arrival, I’m sure the NRT staff would have figured it out.

GUWonder

The agents may have been required to also load in a ticket number for each segment being added for thru-checking the luggage across separate tickets. Not sure if UA’s system allows for three ticket numbers to be associated with the record’s checked baggage tag; but where there’s a will, there may be a way to do it — pretty or not.

jsloan

I suppose that’s possible; however, industry standards allow for up to 16 total segments on a PNR, and each ticket only has four coupons. When booking a trip with more than 4 ticketed points (transfers / stopovers / destination, but not stops on a direct flight), you’ll always see multiple ticket numbers. Generally, you can expect these to be conjunctive tickets (i.e., consecutive ticket numbers), but I can’t imagine SHARES validates that. Regardless, it has to be possible for SHARES to store four ticket numbers per PNR, or there would be valid journeys that it couldn’t store.

(Incidentally, this is why the *A round-the-world fares allow up to 15 stopovers).

wpcoe

Even if the check-in system won't (easily) permit checking in a bag for three separate ticket numbers, a handwritten bag tag should work, no?

I can't remember the details but one time when I was checking a bag and they couldn't get a bag tag to come out of the printer, the supervisor who got involved asked me if I minded if she wrote a hand-written bag tag. I said it was fine, and my bag arrived at the final destination.