Struck Gold - AA connected my bag to a separate QF booking

[justinbrett]

I have a QF J award flight today DFW-SYD-OOL.

I have been in Austin for the weekend and the original plan was to drive my rental car to DFW and return it there. Due to some mechanical issues with the car I ended up returning in Austin instead and booking a cash AA F flight to DFW. I allowed 5 hours so had plenty of time to collect bag and check in with QF.

So I check in with AA at AUS at the staffed priority lane. I think I got the manager/supervisor. I handed over my passport and QF card as I always do. He prints out the bag tags and BP and I thought that was the end of it. He asks if DFW is my final stop - I said no I have a separate QF booking to Australia. He asks to see the information. (I have not asked for anything at this point).

He rips up the bag tags and starts tapping away, then asks to see my QF boarding pass. I said I haven’t checked in yet but I can check in online now - he says yes, if you do that I can check your bags through.

Prints out the new tags and puts them on the bags and explains he’s not supposed to do this but he’s chosen to do it as a favour. I thanked him and went on my way. He said he can’t issue the BP which is why I had to get it online.

I’m fairly certain the bags didn’t get tagged to OOL but I’m not fussed as I have to collect in SYD anyway.

So there you go. It is possible. You definitely couldn’t rely on it but possibly worth asking.

 

[justinbrett]

So AA can’t print the QF boarding passes - the Flagship lounge told me to wait for the QF rep and later told me she wasn’t coming.

So I just did it at the gate (I could have used my phone but I prefer physical for international flights). They had lots of questions, once asked if I had bags and I said they were checked by AA, she wanted to see the receipts and then asked me for the weights of each bag.

I’m unsure what would happen if I had slipped that step, AA tracker last event is unload, but not transfer to QF. But from my air tags they are at the QF SYD gate or possibly already loaded.

 

[madrooster]

I’m unsure what would happen if I had slipped that step

AA would've added a passive segment to their PNR to facilitate this manual through check.

When AA does a manual through check like this, your bag tag would not have been sent to the QF system. If it was not in the QF system, the bag doesn't get loaded as it would not be manifested.

This is one of the reasons why many carriers stopped doing separate PNR through checks - bags go missing and unaccounted for when this occurs and of course they are liable for it.

Then there's also the issue of the manual through check being fraught with human errors, eg. entering the wrong flight.

In contrast, when all flights are on one PNR you generally get all BPs and the tag is correctly sent to QF. For example, I just had a pax fly EWR AS LAX on AS commercial ticket -> LAX AA SYD on AA AAdvantage award -> SYD QF BNE on QF commercial ticket, total of 3 tickets, all on one PNR.

AS printed all 3 BPs and the bag was tagged to BNE. The AS bag tag was correctly sent to AA and QF. In fact on the AA bag tracking you could see the AS bag scans despite AS having no customer facing bag tracking of their own.

 

[justinbrett]

AA would've added a passive segment to their PNR to facilitate this manual through check.

When AA does a manual through check like this, your bag tag would not have been sent to the QF system. If it was not in the QF system, the bag doesn't get loaded as it would not be manifested.

This is one of the reasons why many carriers stopped doing separate PNR through checks - bags go missing and unaccounted for when this occurs and of course they are liable for it.

Then there's also the issue of the manual through check

In contrast, when all flights are on one PNR you generally get all BPs and the tag is correctly sent to QF. For example, I just had a pax fly EWR AS LAX on AS commercial ticket -> LAX AA SYD on AA AAdvantage award -> SYD QF BNE on QF commercial ticket, total of 3 tickets, all on one PNR.

AS printed all 3 BPs and the bag was tagged to BNE. The AS bag tag was correctly sent to AA and QF. In fact on the AA bag tracking you could see the AS bag scans despite AS having no customer facing bag tracking of their own.

Crikey! Good thing I spoke to the gate agent.

You are right about the passive segment, as once checked in at AUS, QF8 appeared on my AA app but with the AA PNR not QF.

 

[justinbrett]

The cherry on top - that was the best priority bag experience I’ve had in recent memory.

My bags came out with the crew bags. I had to step past the captain to get mine.