Interlining bags from BA to non-oneworld airline

A flying visit Ian? Didn’t you only arrive this morning?

Hi IFH

Unfortunately BA are under no obligation to through check your bags onto Thai – even if it was with another one world carrier they wouldn’t have to do it (or even another BA flight) if issued as separate tickets. It is possibly much cheaper to have issued them separately but you lose out on the “protected” connection and the through checking of baggage ability (unless the airline decide to do it anyway as they do often do).

Likewise the airline can always change seat assignments without notifying you for a whole host of reasons – often because a plane has been changed. I agree it would be better if they at least had the grace to tell you – but they often happen at the very last minute. It is a pain when I have organised clients on 2 separate flight reservations and organised seats together, only for people to be moved. If you complain you may get a response along the lines of the following – which my client got

“Unfortunately, there are occasions when we are required to make seat changes. This can be due to many reasons including a change of aircraft configuration, to accommodate a medical passenger or to sit a family group together. As such, we do not give 100% guarantee that all seating requests can be met and we do state this in our conditions of carriage.”

Probably not what you want to hear – though no doubt what you have epxerienced is not uncommon or frustrating.

Have a good trip back.

There seems to be no hard and fast rule. Sometimes when I travel from Air Malta to BA or vice versa I can check luggage all the way through and other times not. It seems to be down to the staff on duty at the time. With BA in vancouver earlier this year, I was able to appeal to their good nature, as had a seven hour layover at LHR and certainly did not want to collect and then carry all the Brown baggage from T5 to T4. The silly thing is that with the exception of the budget carriers, most if not all airline systems can technically allow transfer of baggage onto different connecting carriers.

I am surprised that no-one as yet has come up with a fee to from non code share/alliance baggage transfer. There would be many passengers who would be prepared to pay for this I suspect.

The alternative, as mentioned is to book all flights on the same ticket.

This is all about money pure and rather simple. If the bags had been through checked and then do not arrive in the final destination then the originating carrier is responsible in full or in part. When not on one world connection or on same ticket then BA or any other carrier for that matter need not thru check bags.

As an aside there is no need for PNR details as the entry to produce the bag tag with onward details is a simple entry that any checkin agent can enter. the bags will then be loaded in specific transfer containers for ease of handling at the midpoint.

They don’t do this as BA, in the event of a short shipment, can trace the bag back to the agent and if the bag should not have been thru checked then they can take action. Not sure of they do or have done, but the fact is they can.

Fear is a strong motivational factor in any business.

It has absolutely nothing to do with security as AAA reconciliation should ensure that bags are only loaded on a flight when the passenger is checked in and boarded. If they fail to board the bags should be removed.

Hiding behind security is much the same as hiding behind health and safety. It sounds plausible but is often entirely spurious.

Colleague of mine has the same a few months ago with BA. he went BA to BKK and was then going onto CX to HKG. it saved him £1000 on the BA direct cost.

BA also refused to check through claiming that CX system was not compatible with BA’s as he had made 2 separate bookings, He is BA gold as well so would have thought they might have made an effort.

There certainly does appear to be a fair amount of discretion here but I would certainly never EXPECT baggage to interline if travelling on two seperate tickets – sure, ask about it but don’t expect it to happen. It did work out for me recently when I checked in with Bangkok Airways in Phnom Penh and they checked my bag through to the UK with BA, even though this was not a code share flight (some are) and I had two tickets. On the outbound, I had not been able to check my bag through with BA – as it happens, a tight connection in LHR meant my luggage did not arrive in BKK but BA there did send it on to Phnom Penh the next day.

However, last week, I was travelling GLA-LHR-SIN-KUL with BA and MH and we could not even get a through ticket at a sensible price, let along interline baggage, even though this itinerary was all oneworld.

In the old says, bmi rarely interlined from UK regions on to fellow Star airlines (GLA-LHR-BKK with TG, for example) because, it was explained to me, it was too costly for them to do so.

Stevescoots, I wonder if your colleague’s experience was before CX switched to Amadeus a while back? There might have been compatibility issues before, but there can’t be now…

In any case, I do recognise I wasn’t *entitled* to through-check-in. However, I do (rightly or not) feel very disappointed that while I was able to through-check from TG to BA on my way to London despite TG only operating the short-haul leg and with me having no status with TG or Star Alliance, I was not able to through-check from BA to TG in the opposite direction despite being top-tier with oneworld.

Fortunately I have a lengthy layover on BKK so the whole immigration/baggage-reclaim/customs/transfer-to-departures/check-in/security/immigration thing worked out fine this way round. I would have been in dire trouble on the outbound sector.

Heigh-ho. I know I did set myself up for a fall, but after many years of travelling and many through-checked bags on many airline combinations, this is genuinely the first time I have had a problem. We live and learn – and the lesson is, don’t trust BA to through-check bags, or to put it another way, don’t buy BA tickets where this might be an issue. A short-termist cost-saving measure which may cost BA more in the long run, I suspect – I rather think that the profit they can earn on a long-haul business class ticket would more than offset the insurance premium for losing a bag en-route, but that is BA’s choice. While my choice will be not to do this routing combination on BA again…

After all the brickbats, though – a bouquet. If you are reading this, many thanks to you my cabin crew on the LHR-BKK flight, who were attentive and proactive throughout. You’re a credit to the airline