IME, when this is done there is a subsequent face-check and/or security Question Time at the gate prior to boarding. If you check in with someone live at the ticketing counter instead, they mark this on your boarding pass to confirm that you’re good to go.
I just travelled internationally within the last month via Swiss Air and Lufthansa, and that was definitely not the case. Just one bag as an economy ticket. An additional bag was I think $85. Like you said, check your airline. I think things have tightened up a bit.
The kiosk at Greater Pittsburgh scans your passport and spits out bag tags and paperwork, but the scanners are extremely finicky. A few times I’ve taken a deep breath and stepped over to another kiosk before getting my passport to work. When you turn over your bags, the agent looks closely at passports and passengers.
Paying for our bags at Princess Juliana (St Martin) my credit card was declined. I had two others, but before I could get one out, my phone chimed. An email (text?) from the credit card people asking if I was at the airport in St Martin. I replied yes, and they apologized and said to run the card again. I’d been there for two weeks, using the card multiple times each day, and on day 14 they got curious??
Nothing to add to the overall discussion but this is something that has happened to me before as well. I think that there are firewalls around transportation centers as I have had ATM cards eaten by the machine after 3 weeks and 10 withdrawals because I used it near at the train station. SImilarly, I’ll check out of a 400euro hotel bill and walk to a Tabacchi for a 3 euro gum purchase and get flagged. It always seems to correlate with nearby transportation hubs.
I travel for a living. I have a card I use on the road that I never use at home. That separates all my tax-deductible work-related expenses onto that one card. That card is used in hotels and airports and restaurants all over the US. Probably 50% of the charges are inside airports, those well-known dens of fraudulent charging.
One time I screwed up and paid for lunch near home with my use-for-travel card. In the same zip code as they mail the bill to every month. They bounced the charge. :smack: WTF are they thinking? Artificial intelligence is pretty neat. But there’s some artificial stupidity in there too.
While I understand, that’s not unreasonable to me. If the payment pattern is always you using it on the road, with no exceptions, and then all of a sudden I see a payment at a local place, that could suggest you lost your card and somebody was using it locally, not knowing you never use that card locally. Even I, as a human, looking at that history would be a little :dubious: about the charge, if you’re as rigid about only using it for travel as you say you are.
I had the same thought. But at first glance it sure *sounds *bass ackwards. i.e. You let me use this thing all over the country completely at random sometimes in several states *per day *without the slightest concern. But I try to buy lunch across the street from my house and *now *you complain?! Oy Vey!
I’ve never had a “write up” at any place of employment, not bragging, I just have no clue what it is, so maybe I have and don’t know. I’ve heard this term many times before and still have no clue what it is. Anyone care to elaborate?
A formal note in your personel file which documents management’s beliefs about some specific misbehavior on your part. Typically you’re forced to sign it in effect agreeing that you’re guilty of everything they allege.
In many jobs you can’t accumulate more than a couple of those before being scheduled to be fired as soon as they can trump up a fresh excuse. If you’re someone expecting to make a career out of this job, you really don’t want to get your first one, much less your second.
It’s a Formal Warning that you’ve done Something Wrong and should expect Further Consequences if you do Something Wrong again.
The exact meaning will vary by employer, but it’s common for employers to keep formal records of employees being notified of problems, either because the employer can only terminate for cause, or just to take precautions against other legal actions like discrimination suits.
Ah, I see. Thank you!
Yes, I’ve tried checking in online for international flights, but generally the result is that somewhere in the check-in process they want to have you see a real person with your passport so they can verify you have the necessary papers please to go where you are going. It can be expensive for the airline if they allow an person to arrive in a country without the correct document… and part of that is doing a passable photo-to-face match.
If you are lucky, you can do everything except the person-to-person step before arriving after work. Sometimes they will only print the boarding pass when they have done the document verification.
[continuing the side discussion]
Yeah, I’ve used my credit card all around the country and internationally for all sorts of things, but the only time I remember needing to call my credit card company was when I was visiting my wife’s friends in Western New York and tried to buy a housewarming gift for them at the Home Depot, I got flagged. A day earlier, on the same trip, I spent $600 at a local camera shop without an issue. At first, I was like, WTF? I spend $600 for a goddamn camera and you don’t care, but $100 at the Home Depot and you do? Then I realized, actually, I understand that logic (even though I assume it was probably just a machine learning algorithm). I’m a photographer, so I buy photo stuff all over the place. But going to a Home Depot several hundred miles away from home while on vacation does look a little strange and would probably trip an algorithm that was trained on my (and others) purchasing patterns. Actually, I find it pretty clever.
[/side discussion]
(Emphasis added) :eek: Rejecting a card because the algorithms flag a transaction is one thing, eating a bank card is quite another, especially at an airport or train station.
It gives the hapless traveler Hobson’s choice of missing his flight/train to get the card back – good luck doing that quickly unless the ATM is at an open bank branch with an employee allowed to access the machine – or leaving one of his cards behind for at least the rest of his trip. :dubious:
FWIW, the last time I got to an airport 8 hours before a domestic flight (just bad timing in the way I got there) they refused to check my bags until the 4 hour mark. This was 7 months ago.
Getting a boading pass (even for an international flight) is the easy part. There’s a limit to how far in advance they’ll let you check in your luggage. I think it may vary from airline to airline and possibly even from airport to airport. But if you show up for your flight too early, the airline won’t take your luggage. (Learned from long layovers where I couldn’t check my luggage all the way through. I had to pick it up between flights). You may (again, depending) be able to leave it with the “left luggage” place in the airport (if your airport has that, they’ll likely want some kind of proof that you actually do have a flight) - but then, you’ll still be faced with retrieving it and then checking it in before your flight.
Still, depending on how your day is scheduled, it may be an option for you.
Ha! Piece of cake. I checked us both in before I went to work and they let me drop off both bags without me checking 2 in for an additional $50. They did look at my wife’s passport even without her being there.
Plane flight was ok except the ravioli dinner they served made me sick as hell for a couple hours . At least I didn’t have the fish. 
Still trying to shrug the jet lag. Staying in the museum quarter. Overcast but not raining like the weather channel says it is.
Enjoy your vacation!
Glad to hear it all worked out fine. Enjoy.
Thank you. All of you who posted.
Haven’t been to The Netherlands since '79. So it’s like being here for the first time…again. Very first time for Doll, though.