Baggage Interlining

[TG345]

Have tried a number of searches for this but all I can come up with is a few bilateral agreements between specific airlines:

Does anyone know of an online resource which lists all airlines' interlining agreements?

[radeng]

I know SouthWest won't interline to BA.

[TG345]

Well it seems that for once the internet has no answers. I find it quite hard to believe that such a site does not seem to exist. Am I the only one who would find it extremely useful to be able to check before travelling that, say, Air France can through-check my bag to a domestic flight on TG? Must be an opportunity for someone here?

[Hartington]

It's surprisingly difficult to obtain information on interline agreements of any kind. I know, I tried in a previous existence. The IATA MIBA publication provides some data but there are a range of agreements outside that publication. Even if you start asking airlines for the data (and I had a very valid reason, it was even something airlines had asked us to do) trying to discover the person who holds that data is difficult. Then you run in to maintenance problems when that person moves on and fails to brief their replacement.

I agree that it's a stupid situation but there its is.

I would suggest that it's probably a reasonable assumption that within a given alliance (Star, oneWorld) interlining exists but other than that it's hit and miss.

[loungee]

Interlining your bag will be guaranteed if the eticket booked has one number and includes all your flights, this means that even airlines which are not in the particular alliance will interline your bag. This does normally cost more than separate etickets and is the reason many travel agents book separate legs of your journey on separate tickets. If you are prepared to pay the extra to have your bag through checked then it will happen !

[Hartington]

I'm inclined to agree with loungee to a large degree however there are a few caveats - minor ones I accept.

1) Ticket and baggage interline agreements are separate. While it is unlikely that airlines will have one and not the other it is not totally impossible therefore an e-ticket is not an absolute guarantee.
2) The issue regarding one ticket does not simply apply to interlining. If you have two tickets for one journey and all flights are the same airline that airline may well refuse to through check the baggage. Two tickets = two contracts and you have to complete one before you can start the other.

[WHBM]

Those of somewhat younger years may find it hard to believe, but back in the 1970s, and before then, you could interline from every scheduled airline to every other one. It was taken for granted, this was one of the things IATA arranged then. So I could arrive at Heathrow by TWA and continue by British Midland without them having to make any special one-to-one arrangement. No special arrangements, no alliances, just one single worldwide system.

It's one of the downsides of aviation that this has all been lost since then. Goes with things like tickets from Europe to Australia that seemed to always allow, at zero extra cost, some internal sectors if you wanted, on the different domestic carriers.

[Hartington]

I know it felt like that in the 70s but, believe me, it wasn't. I was a very young travel agent during the late 60s/early 70s and got caught out a couple of times writing tickets that were subsequntly refused on check because of no interline agreement. And in the late 70s I got caught myself when I travelled London/Frankfurt/Delhi/Kathmandu using Lufthansa to Delhi and then RNAC to Kathmandu. When I got to Delhi and RNAC asked where my bag was and I said "Lufthansa checked it through" they laughed. RNAC took the ticket but there was a bit of scrambling involved in finding the bag and rechecking it.