astroflyer

And if you print out the official receipt, it will also show a free luggage allowance, although it often forgets the 3rd bag.

takeahike66

Not only the status is carry over, but my kids (over 21) got upgraded to First on award tickets, on several occasions to HI, and I have yet to be upgraded.

aacharya

Were you also on the same flight? Or do you mean in general?

takeahike66

They were traveling by themselves. on another occ, My wife and I on same flt, sepearate itein, and she was upgraded, both awards, she gets three days notification of upgrade.

MIT_SBM

1. Status: MP Premier Gold. It appears from the baggage calculator that the elite member will be allowed to check 3 x 70 lbs bags on United. Does this allowance extend to a single traveling companion? That is can the two check 6 x 70 lbs bags? Note that the elite member and the companion will be using one-way award tickets.

2. Is the allowance for the award ticket based on the account status at the time the award was purchased or at the time of the flight? That is, if the MP account is at Silver status and an award is purchased and then the MP account moves to Gold status PRIOR to the award flight does the baggage allowance change [in this case increase]?

astroflyer

1) Yes, your baggage allowance should be extended to passengers traveling on the same PNR. It's generally a pretty cushy allowance.

2) The baggage status should reflect your current mileage plus status as it's tied in "real time" to your mileage plus number. If for some reason the computer doesn't pick it up, just flash your gold card, and they'll make it work.

WineIsGood

Lapsed flyertalker here, seeking assistance! I've perused the site of UA, LH, Star Alliance, and of course FT but have managed to utterly confuse myself.

Question is for both outbound and return, how many bags are free, how heavy, and, for anything above the free allowance, what's the charge.

Travelers: 1 UA Gold, 1 UA Silver
Tickets: booked on UA in economy; upgrade has cleared on outbound but not on return (still keeping fingers crossed)
Outbound: IAH-FRA (UA metal, Biz class), FRA-CDG (LH metal, economy). We will have 4 total checked bags @ <50lbs each.
Return: CDG-FRA (LH metal, economy), FRA-IAH (UA metal, economy). We will have 4 total checked bags with 3 @ <70lbs each and 1 @ <50lbs (see my handle for why the weight will go up).

Looks like we get 3+3 checked bags free on the outbound at 70lbs each, so we are ok there.

On the return, does the DOT rule mean we get the UA allowance of 3@70 + 2@50? And if so, is the charge LH's charge of 100 euros for the bag with excess weight?

Or, are we stuck with the Star Alliance allowance of 2+2 @ 50lbs?

aacharya

I also book a lot of wine. Surprised a wine box (12 bottles) is more than 50 lbs - unless you're packing your wine in a suitcase.

The DOT rule does not apply if you are a mixed cabin - BF on the outbound, but only Economy on the inbound.

The DOT rule also doesn't cover the bonuses given for being *G.

However, it seems based on your flights, UA should be MSC, and hence your UA allowance (3 x 70 lbs, regardless of cabin) apply. This is also assuming that you're on the same PNR, and weren't split when upgrading. Otherwise, your companion's allowance will be less on the inbound if not upgraded.

What does UA's reservation say about baggage allowance on the inbound?

LH Excess baggage weight is even more now:

http://www.lufthansa.com/mediapool/p...uly%202013%20(

UALAX

Dear all, I am pretty sure I saw the answer here a while back, but for the life of me I couldn't find it in a search, so I apologize in advance for asking again.

It is fairly common for me to combine 2 pnr's when I am traveling out of LAX. Most recently, I was traveling from LAX to Europe and by a fluke, saved a whole bunch of $ by booking a mileage ticket LAX-EWR and then a revenue ticket ex-Ewr. When checking in, the agents could not figure out even after 20 minutes of furious typing (and this was at the Premier check in) how to check my bag through to my final (even though they said there is no reason I should not be able to do so) since the only way they knew how to do it was to treat it as an interline and you can't interline United to United. In the end, they simply wrote out a bag tag by hand (which they say is done when the system is down) and hoped it would all work out.
When I arrived in EWR, I checked in the UC and they told me that in EWR no one would load a handwritten bag tag onto an int'l flight and told me to go out of security to baggage services where by luggage would be in a back room and re-check it to my final destination.

Now I have a crazy itinerary coming up where I will be in 4 cities on 3 PNRs EWR-PIT-DEN-RNO in the span of one day (not even a MR) and I want to check my baggage so it will meet me in RNO.

Would the collective FT wisdom help me with a way to help the optimum way to explain to the original check in agents how to combine the PNR's so my luggage goes all the way through? I imagine that this is a common issue and I was surprised that a hub check in agent would be so stymied.

WineCountryUA

This was a problem identified early on and I'm surprized it is still unresolved
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...ge-though.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...-w-shares.html

Kacee

The "best" approaches would be:

1. Don't combine separate tickets if you know you are going to be checking bags.
2. If you combine separate tickets, carry-on only.
3. If you combine separate tickets, and want to check bags, get to the check-in counter very, very early.

I personally don't think "explaining" to the agent how to combine the PNR's is likely to be successful. They really don't want to hear anything from you about how to do their jobs. Particularly since they're already going to be slightly annoyed about the whole situation.

With Shares, I have wound up with a large crowd of agents clustered around the screen trying to check my bag through. Sometimes they have been able to do it and sometimes they have given up and made me collect and re-check at the connection.

Fly16

Don't know if this is exactly on point, but last month I did fly SEA-EWR-BOS on two different pnr's, explained it to the check-in counter at SEA and the agent had no problem sending it through. Very straight-forward.

UALAX

Your point is well taken. Although, when circumstances are such that I have a fair amount of time before my LAX flights, I have had some great conversations with the checkin agents, and they often appreciate the knowledge I share with them that I have gained from FT. It is through those conversations that I have upgraded award tickets and shared publicly disseminated policies that UA has not yet trained employees on. For the most part, we spend time commiserating on the vagaries of their ever-changing jobs, and it is within that context that we share tips and knowledge. I have had checkin agents look to me for suggestions about ways to do things and there have even been times where they appreciate my ideas for rerouting and other workarounds (not that I am an expert by any stretch).

I find the agents working at LAX T6 for the most part to be genuinely friendly and motivated to help pax.

All of that being said, you are completely correct that it would be inappropriate and over-entitled for me to waltz in and lecture trained professionals on how to do their job. One must tread lightly and respectfully, and it behooves me to keep that in mind.

Kacee

That's definitely relevant. It post-dates my last experience, so perhaps they have sorted out the IT issues. Hope so!

I didn't mean to suggest you would act inappropriately and hope my post was not taken that way. It's just that every time I've had this issue with checking baggage through, I got the very definite sense the agents' patience was tested and they weren't particularly interested in discussing with me the intricacies of the system issues they were dealing with. I also got the sense the pmUA employees found the situation particularly frustrating, because this was not a problem at all prior to Shares.

vip66

I am trying to find an answer to this:

Booked an award flight using MP for a party of four on LH (intra-Europe). I am *A gold, all others in my party have no status. On UA site my reservation shows only 1 free (50lb) bag per person. LH states *A Gold get an extra free bag.

Will everyone in my party get an extra free bag? This would be the case on UA, but I am not sure about award flights on LH.

When I checked in at the airport they were confused at first; then allowed me one extra free bag (total of 5 for my party), then a supervisor let me have another free bag. But if would be nice to know exactly what the rules are.