My new fiancee and I have a code share flight between Gulf Air/AA to return from Thailand via London.

We change from Gulf Air to AA in London. We're considering taking a few extra days and going to Ireland from London instead of returning to the US. We would then return to the US on a new reservation. I was pretty proud of myself for figuring out a way to extend our trip, until I thought about our checked bags. I called Gulf Air and they said typically the bag is checked all the way through to your final destination, but that we can ask the Ticket Agent in Bangkok to only route it to LHR.

Has anyone ever successfully done this before? I'm concerned that there will be an issue at Bangkok after we've paid for new tickets home, and our bags will end up stateside and we will be in Ireland.

This is commonly asked in relation to "Hidden city ticketing".

It is down to the checkin agent and airline policy whether they will allow you to short check your bags. If you have a short connection at LHR they may be reluctant to short check them.

However, your bags will not travel on the AA flight if you do not board. It just make take some time for you to be reunited with your bags if they are not short checked.

You may want to look in to changing your existing booking to include a stopover, rather than pay for a potentially quite expensive one way ticket.

Couple of things to consider - firstly, you are at the mercy of the check in agent - you could try telling them that you will have liquids meeting you in London that you will need to put into your checked bags? Secondly, know that your ticket means they will get you from Thailand to the US - if there were delays, equipment changes etc. they could put you on a different routing to the US (i.e. via somewhere other than London, or direct to the US on their own or another airline's flight). Something similar happened to a friend last month, they were due to fly A-C via B. But their A-B flight was delayed so much that they would miss their B-C connection, so the airline routed them from A-D-C instead. It is unlikely, but you might want to make sure you Ireland part is fully refundable just in case.

In addition to the excellent advice above, have you priced out your one-way return flight?

Thanks to everyone for their advice and thoughts.

I assume if we do not get on the AA flight, our bags would be pulled from the aircraft and could we claim them at AA baggage service in LHR?

I am currently AA Plat. through a challenge, so I was going to call the Plat. desk and see what they could do for me. I'll be sure to request a stopover.

Lastly, we have done our research and AA is running Economy Mileage SAAVER for 20k per seat.

This trip is already an adventure and we're pretty easy going, hopefully it works out!

Yes, but it may take several hours to locate your bag.

Is your existing ticket issued by AA? If not you will need to contact whoever issued the ticket.
Is it a revenue or award ticket?

Please tell someone you are not continuing your journey when you get to London. Otherwise every other passenger on the flight will have to wait while they page you, page you again, then try to find your bags to offload them.

Also, if you didn't tell them until the flight departed, you would be sitting around the airport for hours (assuming you had at least 2 hours connection time, plus all the time it will take to reunite you with the bags etc.)

Emma, Of course we would notify the airline. I said we were adventurous not reckless . We're discussing other options (shipping Thailand stuff home and carrying on, etc.).

Just wanted to stress that this is a very real risk. Gulf Air has one daily flight out of BKK, either 151 or 153 to Bahrain depending on the day of the week. They will not have spare aircraft sitting around in case one breaks, or a whole lot of spare parts in case something major needs fixing. Since you are not especially interested in seeing Bahrain or, as far as they are concerned, London, and there are lots of other ways to get to the States, the two of you are prime candidates for being sent to your official destination another way. Saying "we really don't want to go to the States, but a round trip was the cheapest way to get to London" won't cut much ice.

Skip the checked luggage. One bag and computer bag will make it a lot easier. There is a lot of information available on one bag travel. I suggest compression bags for clothes.

ChuckIT

Join Date: Jul 2014

Location: Milwaukee, WI

Posts: 1

Welcome to FlyerTalk.

Out of curiosity, in such a scenario how do you get reunited with your bags? I assume the airline/airport wouldn't dump it on a luggage carousel ...

Eventually they do.

Eventually being the operative word at LHR.

I've had my bags offloaded at airports all over the world, including LHR T3. That one took about 90 minutes. Elsewhere it's been between 30 minutes and 3 hours.