Dear Alex,
Last autumn my wife and I flew from Hong Kong to London Heathrow with Cathay Pacific and then connected to Manchester using British Airways. As a silver member of Marco Polo [Cathay’s frequent flyer loyalty scheme] I was entitled to a 30kg baggage allowance, while my wife, being a standard member, had a 20kg allowance.
On the return leg, my wife (because of the previous flights) now qualified for silver status so we both expected to have a 30kg allowance. But when we checked in at Manchester for our return, BA staff told us that we only qualified for its standard allowance of 23kg back to Hong Kong even though we were connecting to Cathay at Heathrow. I suggested that as BA and Cathay were members of the Oneworld alliance they should honour each other’s luggage allowances.
All BA staff could do was to offer a preferential excess baggage rate. Staff claimed they were simply acting in accordance with BA guidelines. As I am taking the same route in the near future, please could you advise the correct procedure?
Paul Forman, Hong Kong
Alex replies:
The first carrier determines the baggage allowance for both sectors. That is why Cathay on departure from Hong Kong and BA out of Manchester acted the way it did.
Why couldn’t each airline honour the other’s allowance? A Oneworld spokesman says: “Airlines in alliances are unable to co-ordinate their baggage offerings because to do so would be in contravention of competition law in key jurisdictions around the world. We appreciate that this can cause considerable frustrations for our customers but our hands are tied in this matter. Our general advice is for passengers to adhere to the more stringent baggage policy of the airlines on which they are flying.”
You could have got around this by taking surface transport to Heathrow and checking in with Cathay at Heathrow T3. But this would have made a long trip even more tiresome and you might still be out of pocket because, apart from the cost of the train fare to London, you would have upset the fare calculation on your ticket.
