WineCountryUA

You might get up to a 24 inch bag thru but not a 26?, 28, 30, 32, ..inch bag. Those will get bounced at TSA.

Machta

Thanks to everyone who gave us such good thoughts and information. We decided to pay cash for a UA positioning flight that is 2 hours earlier than the WN flight, so even if we can't get the luggage ticketed all the way through to AMS, we *should* have 6 hours between flights, and UA to UA. I'll use the WN credit for a trip in September . . . again, thanks to all!

Often1

It's risky because there are hundreds, if not thousands of posts on FT from travelers who were required to purchase new tickets at walk-up prices or to pay significant penalties when they transferred between tickets and blew the timing.

It is much riskier when traveling on a carrier which is not the ticketing carrier and where one is not connecting.

But, as you note, it is all a matter of risk tolerance. Some people can afford to and are willing to accept this and some are not.

VegasGambler

I've certainly seen people get through with very large bags. There are no TSA rules about it either (other than the fact that it has to fit through their machine so it can be x-rayed)

Whether certain rogue TSA agents try to enforce airline rules is another matter.

cranky1K

So, Ms cranky1K and I are going to BKK and she would like to check a bag. She is flying a redeye XXX-ORD on an award ticket, arriving early in the morning to meet me at ORD. Then we are flying ORD-HKG-BKK that afternoon on a separate PNR (we are both on the PNR), on UA to HKG and connecting to HX to BKK.

Can she check the bag at XXX thru to BKK? I’m thinking the 2nd PNR with 2 names and the connection to HX (non *A and non codeshare) will complicate things.

Thanks in advance for your FT insight!

WineCountryUA

So long as the departure from ORD is on UA and the HX is on the PNR with that UA flight, you should be fine

BUT allow extra time checking in --- 20-30 minutes and if starting from a smaller, non-UA staffed airport, you could run into issues with contracted staff not understanding how to do this. There is a help desk for the agents that could be helpful.

So possible and allowed, the issue will be the competence of the check-in agent and supporting supervisor.

StuckinITH

WineCountryUA gave you a good answer. However, if things go wrong like it happened to us starting at a small outstation, do write to the 1K line that booking UA-UA flights you expect the travel to be "seamless". Reminder to United to train their agents (or the people who work in their behalf). There was a recommendation in one of the posts above to only check the luggage at the airport (by that I mean not give the information on the luggage during the web check-in).

abbydancer

Long story short. We were set to fly SFO-IAD on Monday night, back on 12/3, for a lovely family Thanksgiving in DC. Yesterday, my mom, who is in New York right now, broke a bone in her hand, so entire trip was moved to New York.

Rerouting the ticket to New York would have been about 1500 each plus change fee. Maybe UA would waive the fee, but I'm almost certain they wouldn't waive the fare difference (FYI, it's in Business). So we booked a roundtrip ticket from IAD-EWR. We arrive in IAD at about 7:00 am and leave about 12:30 to Newark. On 12/3 we arrive back in IAD at 4pm, leave at 10, so long layovers.

DH wants to check the bags through in SF, and then again in Newark. Can we do that? And if so, how? ie, do we get the separate tags at the kiosk and then go to the desk and ask them to redo them?

Also, I don't think this would make a difference, but we are on separate reservations on the SFO-IAD trip, but the same one for the IAD-EWR trip I booked yesterday.

Any help would be appreciated.

WineCountryUA

Checking thru bags between two separate UA tickets is doable but requires a little extra experience. Small station or new employes will need to contact the Help Desk. An experienced employee should know the steps.

emcampbe

No way to ‘combine’ reservations. Best you can do is a note in the PNRs referencing the other. And all that does is let an agent [who is astute enough to read a note know]. Doesn’t do anything in an automated function (ie, System rebooking in IRROPS).

they should be able to tag the bags through though.

Kacee

Yes. You'll have to see an agent at the counter. You can't accomplish this at the kiosk.

abbydancer

thanks. I figured it couldn't be done at the kiosk. I guess we'll just go directly to the counter, then.

Appreciate the answers.

pigzilla

I just went through this process RT and can share what happened. I had 2 separate PNRs, one for EWR-SFO-EWR, and one for SFO-AKL-SFO. On the outgoing flight, the agent at the 1K check-in counter in EWR was able to route my bags through to AKL via SFO, however it took her about 15 minutes and she had to call someone to help get it done.

However on the return flight from AKL, the NZ Air checkin agents were unable to route my bag from AKL to EWR. Apparently United uses NZ Air agents to man their checkin counters (Premier) in AKL.I had to pickup the bag after immigration in SFO and recheck it in the transfer area in Terminal C. Not a big deal as I had about 1hr 45 min connection. But this follows the feedback from others on this thread that personnel at non UA hub airports or UA-partner airline agents wont be able to do this.

Kacee

Which is exactly the same as it would have been if the bags were tagged through, since you must pick up your bags and clear customs at the first point of US entry.

On the broader point, ironically it's much more difficult to check a bag on separate tix UA-UA than it is UA-OAL. At a hub, it should be doable, but you should leave extra time.

pigzilla

The only difference is that I couldn't just drop my bag off after customs like everyone else with pretaggged bags. I had to go off to the side and stand in the queue at the United bag transfer desk for them to manually print out a new tag and attach it to my bag. Didn't take too long ~10 minutes with 4 people in line, but YMMV.

Agreed about UA-UA being more difficult than UA-OAL, that's exactly what the EWR agent told me when she was doing it.