Questions and Answers

I booked an award ticket through Alaska Air.

Flight routing is DFW > PDX > LAX > MEL – AS domestic F and QF F LAX > MEL

Award was redeemed on one booking, but I have two booking reference numbers: DFW > PDX on one reference number, and PDX > LAX > MEL on the other reference number (it’s a QF reference number)

My question is – will my bag be checked through to MEL when I check in at DFW, or will I need to re-check at PDX (since different booking reference numbers), or worse yet, will I need to re-check in at LAX.

My actual main concern is whether I need to re-check when I get to LAX – I have 8 hours to kill there, and was hoping not to have to collect luggage in LAX, and re-check to MEL, since I don’t think the QF check-in is open until 3 hours ahead of the flight.

Since PDX-LAX-MEL is on one ticket I wouldn’t think you’d have to re-check in LA. I would hope that since all your domestic legs are on AS that they could check your bag all the way through. But I’m trying to be logical and sometimes airlines aren’t….

Thanks for the feedback. That’s what I figured would be the case (at least checked through from PDX to MEL).

Since I’ve got a lot of time to kill at LAX, I wanted to take advantage of the QF F Lounge as long as possible 🙂

I think it’s really going to come down to the competence of the check-in agents. Alaska and Qantas [I]have[/I] an interline agreement, so they theoretically should be able to check your bags through from Dallas.

In practice, I’d plan on having to reclaim your bags in LA, as Alaska agents haven’t historically done a great job of interlining.

Also, it’s weird that you have two [I]Alaska[/I] reference numbers. If you had one from the purchasing program and one from the operating carrier, that would make sense, but I don’t understand why the DFW>PDX flight would be separated out like that.

TIffany:

Thanks for your insight! In the confirmation email I received from Alaska, it lists two confirmation numbers – the AS one, and the QF one. On the AS site, I see all 3 flights, but when I visit the QF site under the QF reference number, I see the one AS flight, and the QF flight.

I have no idea why they did it that way. I have just an hour turn around time when I land in PDX, so I hope they will at least check through to LAX at DFW if they can’t check me all the way through.

I guess I’ll just wait and see what happens…

Thanks again…