I am flying in on American to catch an international flight on Qatar. My sister made the Qatar reservation for she & I. So I’m led to believe I will need to retrieve my bag in Seattle & get over to the desk for Qatar. I use a wheelchair & the wheelchair attendant says my bag will transfer automatically. But the reservations are not connected at all. So am I incorrect?
If both segments are on the same reservation (record locator in the jargon), the transfer will be automatic, net of screwups. If not, then neither airline knows about the other at all. And you must personally transfer your bag from one airline’s baggage system to the other.
Qatar and American are both part of the oneworld Alliance. Which means they codeshare. So it ought to have been possible to book both flights at once using either AA’s or Qatar’s website. The segment flown by the other airline will also have a flight number from the reserving airline. E.g. the AA flight from XYZ to SEA will be AA flight 123 and simultaneously Qatar flight 3456. Or vice versa. But if that’s not what you and / or your sister did, well then that’s not what you’ve got.
It sort of sounds like you’re at SEA now. Look at your checked baggage claim chit with the barcode. It will say where the bags are going. If it just says SEA, that’s where they’ll stop. If it says e.g. DOH, that’s where the bags will end up w no action from you.
I believe the wheelchair attendant is describing the normal situation for the 99% of people who make a single end to end reservation, not the 1% who make two unrelated reservations. So they’re telling you the normal case, not necessarily your specific case.
The term they use for this is “interlining”. As mentioned, if on same PNR, it should happen. In reverse though, from international flights into the US, you need to pick up the bags, they always need walked through the baggage area
Thanks! That is what I kept telling the attendant.
Note for the future: When you checked the bag it would have been helpful to discuss this two-flight vs through-flight issue w the bag-checking agent and also confirm with your own eyes what flight number(s) and destination(s) are on the tag they strapped to your bag.
Mistakes are much more rare now that most of the process is computerized. But there are still ways for the wrong tag to be affixed to the wrong bag.
And as we see now, there’s plenty of ways for your understanding of the situation to maybe not match the airlines’ / computers’ understanding. To your, not their, detriment.
I hope this works out OK for you.