Checking baggage through when connecting to separately ticketed flight
 

I sometimes fly United and connect to another airline on two separately ticketed bookings. I've never had a problem doing this until Sunday, when the United agent complained strenuously about checking my suitcase through to my final destination b'c all flight segments were not booked together (like through Orbitz, I guess). He said that United might stop doing so b'c it was so inconvenient; indeed, it took him a good 20 minutes to do it with the computer and two phone calls.

Anyone have some insights here? I'm Delta plat and Delta pulled out of my city, hence the need to fly another carrier to get to Delta. May be status matching and switching airlines next year.

You probably just hit a newbie or a former sUA employee not fluent with the process in the new system.

When I interline bags on separate tickets it tends to go pretty smooth. I am not surprised it took your agent 20 mins though - everything IT with the new (i.e., worse) United takes surprisingly long.

The trend is that airlines are less likely to do this. HA stopped doing this, and DL followed shortly thereafter. UA is still doing it, AFAIK.

That said, like many things, it's not as easy a with SHARES as it used to be with Fastair, so it's not surprising if you encountered some resistance from a harried agent. They could be frustrated that it's so much more difficult to do (ex-UA agent) or simply frustrated because they're busy and have to spend time doing something like this (ex-CO or ex-UA).

I run into this all the time even with separately ticketed all UA itineraries. I usually make my international flight reservations early but the domestic legs are primarily business and change on a week to week basis so I never know where I'm coming from or going to be, so I always have two itineraries.

The change does require a call to ops and your baggage has to be flagged as VIP for some reason. If there is an international flight, the domestic leg has to be added to the international reservation, just as an fyi. All of the flight information from one reservation has to be entered by hand into the other.

As far as I know there isn't a policy on this, it's just annoying because it takes so long. Yesterday I had an agent who actually knew how to do it and it still took her close to 15 minutes furiously typing away. Just make sure you get there early and play nice!

Priority bags are always marked "VIP." If you're a 1K, that's correct and should be on all your bag tags.

Just for the record, I've been doing this on more than 75% of my flights for more than 10 years, and never once had even the slightest problem with UA or any other *A carrier before 3/3. I've only had 1 single problem with this before 3/3, in 10 years and that was a single flight originating in Kiev on Aerosvit connecting to UA through FRA. Since 3/3, every time I do this with UA, it's a struggle. The issue is SHARES. Even for a well trained agent sCO agent, it seems to take 20 minutes. For a new agent or an sUA agent, it can take 30-40 minutes. If UA stops interlining bags for itineraries that aren't on the same record, it will be a huge issue for me as I'll need to change connection times from 45 minutes to 2-3 hours to leave the secure area, claim bags, re-check them, then go through security again. I hope this doesn't happen. It's really true that DL won't interline bags unless all segments are on the same record?

The problem with putting all segments on same record is that you have much higher change fees and the change process becomes a lot harder, plus, every time I look at this, the fares become a lot higher and the overall cost of the trip can be as much as 100% higher than with separate tickets - particularly when combining multiple airlines.

Check bags through with 2 tickets on 2 * airlines?
 

Am flying GOT-BRU on Brussels Airlines then BRU-ORD on UA in January on two separate tickets.

Does anyone know if I they will accept a suitcase all the way through?

Thanks and happy thanksgiving!

Delta was still doing it two weeks ago . . . I'm trying American Eagle to connect through DFW To Delta my next two trips and hoping for no hassle b'c I have insufficient connect time to retrieve my suitcase and re-check it.

You should be so lucky! BA won't even check my luggage in for two consecutive BA flights (say EDI-LHR, LHR-LUX) if I haven't booked them on the same booking reference.

I've done it twice in the last two months from UA to AF and BA, respectively, both times it did not go smooth and took a couple agents working on it at the same time to get it done but they got it done.. Both times the GAs complained of SHARES making life difficult since 3/3.... Your situation depends more on the SN agents and their system...

Just checked . . . Delta's policy changes mid-January.

As I general rule I assume that a *A carrier won't transfer to a OW carrier, but I was flying from LGA-ORD-DFW-BNE earlier in the year with the first leg on UA and the rest on AA/QF and the UA agent actually offered to tag my luggage all the way through to BNE, so I was pleasantly surprised with that.

I have read though that DL have stopped interlining luggage between carriers, or something to that effect

The new policy starts 1/15/13: http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfr...arate-tickets/

US apparently has such a policy already: http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfr...arate-tickets/

Only if on two seperate tickets.

Interlink baggage agreements are between individual airlines, not airline alliances. You can definitely have bags transferred from one airline to another in different alliances, although it looks like some airlines are starting to limit/discontinue baggage transfers not on same record.