Interlining bags from BA to non-oneworld airline

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Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 53 total)

  • AMcWhirter
    Participant

    Hello Ian

    Sorry to hear about your baggage through-check problem.

    Presumably as a cost-saving measure airlines are increasingly restricting the availability of baggage through-checking. In more and more cases they are limiting this facility to those passengers who hold one ticket or who are connecting between alliance members.

    But as our readers are discovering, even when they travel with the same alliance carrier or hold one ticket there is no guarantee that their bags will be through-checked.

    One Munich-based reader travelled with LH and NZ from Munich to Auckland via Hong Kong using separate tickets. The LH staff in Munich happily checked his bags right through. But on the return trip, NZ staff in Auckland refused to do likewise “because of the recession.”

    http://www.businesstraveller.com/ask-alex/2012/through-checking-with-star-alliance

    A Luxembourg-based reader travelling with a regular ticket (ie a single published fare ticket for the entire trip) couldn’t get AC to through check his bags between Toronto and Luxembourg. He had booked Lufthansa for the Toronto-Frankfurt sector but the flight was actually operated by Air Canada.

    Had Lufthansa been the operator he could have got his bags through checked onto Luxair at Frankfurt for the final leg to Luxembourg. But because Air Canada was the operator and this airline does not hold a baggage agreement with Luxair, he could not.

    http://www.businesstraveller.com/ask-alex/2011/through-check

    So as you can see, it’s a complex situation and the airlines show no signs of resolving the matter.

    Alex McWhirter


    mikewebley
    Participant

    I am sure I saw a poster at LGW last week offering this service to interline bags between airlines, even low cost ones.


    Senator
    Participant

    I’ve had limited issues with this, but it should be quite fun later in July when I am flying ARN-LHR in CE on BA, connecting to LH on LHR-MUC in preparation for LH F to the US on separate tickets and PNRs.

    In my previous job, we used a TA and frequently had multiple tickets on multiple, none-aligned carriers. I once had a Passenger Name Record (PNR) containing three tickets on different ticket stock:
    BGO-BHX on KLM
    BHX-CDG-SIN-AMS-ARN on AF
    SIN-KUL on SQ

    In this case, I had no issue with interlining as everything was on one PNR. So I try to contact a TA when I have this situation so I can at least get the everything on one PNR. This tends to solve many issues as the full route is displayed to the check-in agent.


    canucklad
    Participant

    Hi IFHK

    Can fully get your frustration,……..computer says no attitude

    Another more simple explanation is that, possibly the Check-in person hadn’t a clue on how to attach one PNR to another in order to expadite your request…..

    Easier to say No rather than look stupid….

    I remember in the old days checking in on a CP flight to YYZ, then a KL flight AMS then an AQ flight to EDI, all with seperate tickets….luggage arrived at EDI !….and that was before barcodes…

    Maybe too much technology and not enough customer service…

    I’m also baffled by the distribution of cost aspect? Apart from the liability, I would have thought it would be just as cheap to drop a checked bag onto the transfer belt as it is to drop it onto the re-claim belt….


    TimFitzgeraldTC
    Participant

    Hi IFH

    BA dn TG do interline – I have had clients though to Vietnam and they payed extra for 1 ticket to ensure connections and baggage went through.

    The most extreme situation I have had recently was a Pisa-Paris-Manchester – issued as 1 through ticket on Air France. Air France at Pisa would not check them in for both sectors. Luckily (and I didn’t realise) they only had hand baggage so they only had to get to the transfer desk at CDG and be checked in again on a machine so they just made the 60 minute connection.


    AMcWhirter
    Participant

    Hello Tim

    Re: AF Pisa-Paris-Manchester

    I am sure AF, like all the other carriers at Pisa, has to rely on a ground handling agent. In which case I wonder if this is the fault of AF or the ground handler ? Surely as a hub airline, AF would allow baggage through checking for passengers travelling on one ticket ?


    TimFitzgeraldTC
    Participant

    Hi Alex

    You may be correct – most likely a ground agent for AF but I was still shocked when I heard. Think AF flight to MAN could have been a codeshare operated by BE but still never encountered this before – very odd

    Tim


    AMcWhirter
    Participant

    Hello Tim

    Not so long ago all CDG-MAN flights were operated by AF mainline but now I see that some are and some are now operated by Flybe under a code-share.

    But that shouldn’t affect the baggage transfer as Flybe does interline with a few carriers. In any case, how is the travelling public, ie the AF customer, supposed to make sense of all this ?


    pdtraveller
    Participant

    It gets really interesting when the connection point is a country that requires a visa! More interesting still when the connection time is the minimum and the inbound carrier is running late.

    Singapore – as always – is the place to transit as bags which are not through checked can be quickly retrieved by their superb baggage service staff and re routed without the need to enter the country. I have personally had experience of this when the Australian jobs worths at Qantas and BA refused to through checks bags when I was staying overnight at the transit hotel.


    AnthonyDunn
    Participant

    An interesting discussion point raised by Ian from HKG.

    Had much the same experience myself last Summer with BA LHR-PEK and CA PEK-ULN. The tickets were bought separately but I checked the BA website that they had interlining with Air China. On this basis, I obtained only a single entry visa for China (for our stopover on the way back from Mongolia). Imagine my consternation at T5 when the BA check-in told me that they would not/could not check my bags through to Ulaanbataar on Air China because they were separate tickets and CA were not a One World carrier – so there was no automatic interlining.

    The prospect of using up my single entry visa at Beijing Capital just so that I could check-in my bag for ULN was inducing palpitations. Thankfully, I recalled that Senior Management had also recently travelled via PEK and had been able to exit the airport between flights… Unknown to BA’s information system, the Chinese issue 24-hour transit visas at PEK (can anyone imagine that happening at any UK port of entry?!) and there was no problem. Otherwise, the prospect of having to go through the entire visa application process in Ulaanbataar all over again was a genuinely grim prospect.

    Yes, everyone is now trying to do their best to avoid taking liability for other people’s costs but there are times when service providers ought to be in the business of solving problems for their customers, not adding to them.


    IanFromHKG
    Participant

    Being in an alliance clearly makes a difference. The memsahib just managed to through-check from BA LGW-AMS onto CX AMS-HKG – although the way she described it was “Checkin was abysmal he barely lifted his head yawned openly and grunted in responses (??) but I did manage to get bag checked all the way thru despite it not being on same ticket so at least that is something !”

    BA service does seem to be falling short in this respect, whether or not the bags get checked through!

    Fortunately, just to let you all know, i did manage to do the necessary in BKK to retrieve my bags and re-check, although the immigration officer did seem a bit nonplussed when she asked which hotel I was staying in and I said I was only arriving in order to check in again… !!


    IanFromHKG
    Participant

    Well, the memsahib arrived back home this morning. BA *did* check through her bags from LHR-AMS on BA onto AMS-HKG on CX. And yet, despite a layover of 2 hours and 45 minutes and her having checked no less than four times that the bags were checked through (including checking in AMS), she was greeted on arrival by CX ground staff saying her bags were not on the plane because “BA did not hand them over to CX on time”

    It’s an utter shambles


    TominScotland
    Participant

    Ian, of course it was not BA who did not hand over the bag on time but rather their baggage handling agent in Amsterdam, Aviapartner, who clearly failed to pass the bag on to Menzies (Cathay’s Baggage Handling Agent). Why or where the problem occurred between the two are interesting questions….


    IanFromHKG
    Participant

    Indeed, although given the agency/principal relationship I think the description is still accurate! Whether BA failed to perform directly or failed to perform through their agent, it still represents a failing by BA

    Now, who is liable for the EU compensation, that’s what I would like to know?


    canucklad
    Participant

    Ian…..

    Look on the brightside……

    BA has delivered you an airport to luggage home delivery service !

    Cross threading here a bit, I would liked to have seen the journey (methodology) of how a suitcase is interlined during our ” Live LHR ” programme….

    With barcode technolgy I would surely have thought that it was pretty much automated…and would have thought Schipol had a very efficient delivery system !

    On your last point, as long as the bags are reconciled with you in a ” timely” manner I’m not sure that compensation is an option…..

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