Once upon a time the legacy air carriers had interline agreements and you could check your bag through to your final destination. Now, half the time, I find my interline connections are between or among LCCs or LCCs/legacy carriers, and I find myself having to hump the bags from baggage claim back to the long line at the ticket counter (at best) or, at worst, having to haul them to a different terminal or even having to find a place to store them.

Surely the time has come for the government to bang heads together and re-invent the interline baggage system to include jetBlue, Southwest, etc. etc. This would reduce the workload on the people who x-ray and otherwise inspect bags (even though they are compensated through high ticket taxes) by not having to re-inspect bags that were already inspected earlier the same day.

Your thoughts?

AFAIK, interline baggage is governed by contracts between carriers, not with the gov't. As such, the last thing we need is for the feds to get involved anymore than they are with things involving our luggage.

But thats how the LCC's are keeping afloat. NO interline ticketing and no baggage agreements. They get to keep all your money, and they don't have to make sure your baggage gets anywhere that they don't fly themselves.

Bad luck. The industry is actually moving the other way. Increasingly, even network carriers will not interline to other carriers unless you have bought a through-ticket - which, as we know, is often more expensive.

Transferred baggage is the most likely way for it to go astray, and when that happens the cost of sorting it out is with the final airline, who actually may not be getting much of the revenue. One of the main reasons for airlines to wind up such arrangements with others was the cost of this.