Caution -– A New Reason You Might Miss Your Connecting Flights

For passengers returning to the country from international destinations and then connecting to a domestic flight home, the connection time is often short.

By the time you have cleared Immigration, claimed your luggage, and passed through Customs, you are hurrying to re-check your suitcases immediately with the airline and rush unencumbered to the domestic terminal.

Until recently, if you had 2 separate tickets on different air carriers to reach your final destination, you could show them both at check-in and your luggage would be tagged to the last airport.  Often, you would be able to get all of your boarding passes, too.

Now, apparently, there has been a change.  If you do not have all of your flights booked on the same ticket, you will have to carry all of your luggage with you to the domestic terminal and go through the check-in procedure again.

It was not clear why this has changed in the past few months — the TSA, airlines, U.S. Government, all possibilities — but we were unable to check our luggage from Auckland to Chicago, since our tickets from Auckland to Los Angeles were on Air New Zealand and our flight from Los Angeles to Chicago was on United, both Star Alliance partners.

This was not a problem in the past and did not seem to prevent United from tagging luggage  all the way to Auckland via Los Angeles from Chicago on the departure with the same tickets.

When making your reservations back into the country with separate tickets, be sure to allow extra time for your connecting flights and re-checking your luggage at another terminal.  In case of a delayed arrival, you will not automatically be put on the next available flight, since your flights will not be linked.

If possible, put all of your flights on the same ticket for easy luggage transfer and automatic re-booking on delayed flights.  It will save you a lot of hassle and give you peace of mind.