How does *A handle overweight/excess baggage?
 

Two of us are moving to Nice, France in 4 weeks and we are trying take as many of our things (clothes, golf clubs, desktop PC, even a rowing machine) as baggage. We are travelling on a *A RTW business ticket that includes North America so I understand we are governed by piece concept. Sectors are WRE-AKL (NZ) - AKL-SIN-FRA (SQ) - FRA-NCE (LH).

As *G we are allowed 3 pieces each of 32kgs per piece. The PC & rowing machine will consume 4 pieces and with 2 sets of golf clubs we are up to our 6 piece limit under normal *G allowances. But as PPS we can each have 4 pieces for the SQ flights. NZ checkin staff at WRE have said they will honour the SQ allowance (although we might overwhelm the tiny plane and not all pieces will get on our flight or perhaps we will be greeted by someone else with a different story) but I do not know what will happen in FRA when it gets transferred to LH.

Wanting to minimise our check-in hassles, what advice do you offer? If we exceed the number of pieces, how are the excess baggage charges levied since we are on 3 different carriers?

Or is an option sending some pieces as unaccompanied luggage through an airfrieght company such as TNT?

Regards

NZ is under no obligation to honour the PPS allowance, so if they do, that would certainly be very nice of them.

Otherwise, excess baggage charges on weight concept routes are, generally, calculated based on the formula of [1 kg of excess baggage = 1-2% of the full OW Y fare]. For WRE-NCE a full OW fare would probably be around 5 000 USD, so a 32kg bag would cost $1600-3200 USD :eek:.

If you need the stuff in a hurry I'd be more worried about ability of NZ to take it on the Beech 1900Ds between WRE and AKL. The number of times I've seen some bags left behind on full flights on those a/c. Normally *G's bags would be last to be left behind, but with so many bags I wouldn't rule it out.

Pick a low load flight even if it means a long connection in AKL.

This is OT-ish because it's not actually *A related. But I think it's a good story.

We used to work in the Gulf. One year when we went home on repat we took Czech Air because they had a very nice fare BAH-PRG-HEL in C. As I recall, the business class luggage allowance was 30 kg. but our bags were bulging and the four of them totaled 72 or 74 kg., something like that. Nevertheless, the check-in man just smiled and put 'heavy' tags on the suitcases, and that was that. (They had a reputation for being ... generous ... with things like that.)

By coincidence an acquaintance of ours was on the same Prague flight. During our stopover at PRG, we ran into him. He was killing time, pushing around a trolley with a suitcase and a carry-on, waiting for the check-in for his connection to London to open. 'What's with the suitcase?' we asked. 'Oh', he said. 'My travel agent recommended that I collect the bag here and check it in again. Less chance of it getting "lost", which is apparently a big problem here'.

O-K. Our travel agent never said anything like that to us but ... c'est la vie, eh? However, the funny part was still to come. A couple of hours later on our way from the lounge to our gate, we bumped into this chap again. The trolley was gone, he had only his carry-on -- and he was spitting mad. 'What's wrong?' we asked. He replied, 'When I checked in, they said my suitcase was overweight -- and I had to pay $100!'

:)

cheers,

Henry

Thanks for your replies. I hope we are am not faced with a surcharge that KVS writes of.:eek:

Kiwi Flyer, NZ-WRE suggested just that, fly earlier or at least get our bags to the airport for the 2 earlier flights.

As to henry999, that's what we are hoping for, check-in once and all the way to NCE. I spoke to SQ today and they said if NZ checks all our bags through to NCE, there should not be additional charges or hassles. So it is up to NZ to figure out the charges and I guess they would get to keep any of the money they might collect. Hopefully an angel will check us in.;)

At least we are leaving the kitchen sink behind.:D

Once I get settle in at my destination, I'll let you know how it went. We did manage to get 2 upgrades to First AKL-SIN-FRA so we will leave NZ in style.^

We were lucky and our trip went to plan. We checked 8 pieces (each weighing 30kgs) with NZ in WRE and picked up 8 pieces 2 days later in NCE. NZ-WRE said they would honour SQ's baggage allowance and they did. It seems downstream carriers have to accept whatever they are given so LH had no say in what we had checked through although the agent at FRA raised an eye brow when she looked at our baggage claim tags.

To make things easier, we arrived for check-in at a slow time for staff and they had 3 flights to get our bags to AKL since apparently our baggage alone was the weight limit for tiny aircraft. Weather was packing in and flights were slightly delayed but not cancelled.

I understand we missed quite a storm through the region the next day so we were especially lucky to leave when we did. When we have to move again, the excess baggage allowance for PPS is something we will miss.