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Bits: Airportr ski equipment offer, BA refusing to budge on ‘two tickets’ baggage transfer

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News in brief:

Airportr offering free transfer of ski equipment this winter

We’ve covered Airportr a few times on Head for Points.  This is the luggage collection service whereby your suitcases can be collected from your home or office and taken to the airport for you to pick up in the departure terminal – or in some cases they can even be checked in for you.  

On your return, you can drop your cases with them whilst you head straight to your home or office – and at London City on BA domestic flights they will even find your luggage on the carousel for you.

We reviewed the service here if you want to know more about it.

Until 31st March, Airportr will transport your winter sports equipment for free when you pay for at least one suitcase to be collected.  Given that ski and snowboard equipment is even less fun to carry around than suitcases, this is well worth a look.  Details can be found on the Airportr site here.

AirPortr

British Airways refusing to budge on checked through bags

Late last year, all of the oneworld alliance members were told that they could, if they wished, now refuse to check through bags between oneworld airlines when the passenger was travelling on a separate ticket.

In plain English, this means that if you were flying British Airways to Doha and then connecting to a Qatar Airways flight to Delhi – booked on a separate ticket – BA would refuse to check your bags through to Delhi.

British Airways jumped on the opportunity to do his because it is a money saver – they are no longer liable to compensate you if your bags fail to connect.  They really pushed the boat out, however, by also refusing to check through baggage between two British Airways flights on separate tickets.

This is astonishingly inconvenient.  In the Doha example above, the passenger now needs to collect their baggage in Doha, clear immigration in Doha – which includes paying for a Qatari Visa, go the Qatar check-in desks (luckily Doha is a one-terminal airport) and then clear security again.  Some people have found themselves separated from their luggage because they did not have the necessary visa to go landside in order to re-check their bags.

Cathay Pacific made the same changes as BA.  However, within a few weeks, they backtracked under substantial pressure from passengers.  You can now check through a bag on two Cathay Pacific flights when booked on separate tickets.

BA will not budge.  If you thought it would, you should know that travel agents are receiving a continual bombardment of emails from the airline – two in the last week alone – reminding them not to do this.

Here is typical example from last week (the bolding was in the original):

“It is important that you never advise customers that the airports may be able to through check-in when they have tickets issued on separate bookings, as the airport teams are unable to assist resulting in frustration for the customer at check-in.

In addition to not being eligible for through check-in, customers travelling on separate tickets issued on different PNR’s will need to collect their bags at the transit point and re-check in, their baggage allowance and lounge access may differ depending on the fare paid for each sector and Conditions of carriage guidelines only apply for the disrupted sector and not on any separate connection.”

Charming.  It saves a few quid though, so …..

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Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (97)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • David S says:
    6 Feb6 February 09:29

    This is a very annoying BA problem particularly if you don’t live in London. I had to use a Lloyds upgrade voucher from London but had to tag along a revenue booking from Manchester to LHR domestic since didn’t want to waste extra Avios but I suspect I have to pick my luggage up in T5 and then recheck again. Rather annoying.

  • Nick M says:
    6 Feb6 February 10:21

    Just spotted this… hopefully it’ll work with transactions on PayQuiq too – otherwise I doubt I’ll remember to carry the card. Could make giftcards interesting again

  • Chris says:
    6 Feb6 February 10:30

    Surely then this just incentivises passengers to pick each leg of a journey as a separate buying choice, given other airlines even standing in terms of choice, since there’s no prospect of checking bags through?

    I means the previous tendency to pick BA for a potentially more expensive leg out of convenience is now gone, so BA only now win that when they’re cheapest?

  • Bob says:
    6 Feb6 February 10:34

    It is definitely terrible customer service not through checking baggage on separate tickets but what I find even more unbelievable is that if BA brings you in late from one flight and you subsequently miss your next flight (on a separate ticket) they will charge you to change the flight you missed. If it was a redemption ticket you will be totally screwed as you will need to buy a new ticket.

    • Anna says:
      6 Feb6 February 10:40

      Is that definite? I haven’t had any confirmation of that with recent travel bookings. Would travel insurance cover the cost of new flights if you missed a connection due to a late arriving flight? 3 x flights from Heathrow to Manchester can easily cost £450! Though maybe this is BA’s rationale…

      • Anna says:
        6 Feb6 February 10:42

        Apologies, that would be the return cost, but still wouldn’t be happy at having to shell out over £200…

  • Anna says:
    6 Feb6 February 10:37

    This link says the extra points are given when using a debit card – I suspect many people, like me, do their Tesco shopping with Amex to boost their spend.

    • Rich says:
      6 Feb6 February 12:21

      If you get 1 CCP per £ (on top of the 1 CCP you get for using normal clubcard) then that works out at an extra 2.4 Avios per £1 – my Amex certainly doesn’t beat that.

    • Alan says:
      19 Feb19 February 15:27

      Will be interesting to see if in-store spend is like petrol station spend where you can just use your debit card as Clubcard and then still pay with another card!

  • Bob Housem says:
    6 Feb6 February 11:20

    Can confirm rebook required if on separate tickets. Happened to us as family of 3 last year. Single ticket price NYC-LHR-ATH economy+ was $2500 but $1600 on separate tickets. Unfortunately on way back there was equipment failure in ATH resulting in overnight stay and no last leg flight at all. Effectively abandoned by BA we flew home on United. Goodbye BA after 40 years. Loss of business to them since has been 7 Transatlantic flights.

  • BlackBerryAddict says:
    6 Feb6 February 12:36

    This is not about cost savings, but about revenue protection. The example above where the single ticket was $2500 but separate tickets was $1600 is the perfect example of this. And it transfers the risks of something going wrong to the passenger. BA has (currently) high load factors and profits, and they feel they don’t to accommodate these cheap tickets. Equally they are tired of all of us using cheap European tickets to connect to cheap Qatar Airways tickets to the Far East, and getting Gold status on top.

    I am not defending BA for doing this (and it is annoying), but that is their rationale, and I can kind of see where they are coming from.

    • Natalia S says:
      6 Feb6 February 14:14

      I see what BA’s wishful thinking re revenue may be, i.e. that a passenger would pay more for his journey on one ticket. They will definitely get some of it, but they will also lose a bit:

      Previously I would buy separate tickets to save, but would make sure that I pick One World airlines wherever possible. Then my baggage would be delivered to the final destination. Under new rules, I don’t take a journey on one ticket and pay more, if that was BA’s hoping for. Instead, I just don’t bother to do One World only for a connecting flight; I take all kinds of airlines combinations – and it turns out even cheaper for me.

  • Ed says:
    6 Feb6 February 12:41

    I can confirm that CX will check-through baggage as long as the onward PNR is on an OW carrier. They did this recently for me without a fuss on HKG-KIX (CX) and KIX-HEL-LHR (AY), albeit I am OWE so they may be more flexible at F check-in at HKG.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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