boarding passes.
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Location: Home, Work, Airport, Here (not in that order!)
Posts: 4,518
Not just regional airports, sometimes major domestic, or even international airports too.
A couple of reasons I have come up with.
1) The computer system of the airline who you are using to check in at the domestic airport is not able to handle reservatations for your international airline. So your bag can be tagged through, but you can't get your Boarding pass.
2) Your international flight has not "opened" yet, so you can't be checked in for it.
Member of: AA Exec Plat; QF LTG; PC Plat; HHonors Gold
Posts: 10,055
Mal's points are correct. To expand on Point 1, when a reservation is made by your travel agent (or directly with an airline), it is entered into one of the major GDS (reservation) systems. The airlines use one of these (or their own) for their res process. If the reservation covers airlines that use a different GDS to the one the original res is made, the relevant info will be pushed through the other GDS systems as necessary.
So the check-in agent can see the connecting sectors (they have been pushed through to their res system as info segments) and hence can tag the bag through, but if the connecting flight is operated by an airline that uses a different system, and the agent does not have access to that system, then they cannot issue the boarding pass.
This is less of a problem for flights within the major alliances. Even though the partner airlines may use different GDS systems, they have the systems links in place to access each other's check-in systems.
One other factor that can come to play in this area is policy that can vary with various situations. I understand that when the US raises its security alert status to a certain level, they will not allow anyone other than an employee of a US airline to issue boarding passes for flights on US airlines. So in this case even though a QF check-in agent in Australia can generally access the AA systems to check you in for an AA flight, if the US security alert status is of such a level (may be "Orange", but not sure) they will be blocked from doing so and you will need to collect your boarding pass from an AA desk later in the journey.
thank you for your replies my 1st flight is with qantaslink and my inter. flight is wiyh qantas when returning i am allways issued with inter and domestic boarding paases.
This is less of a problem for flights within the major alliances. Even though the partner airlines may use different GDS systems, they have the systems links in place to access each other's check-in systems.
This does not seem to the case with AY and QF. I had two seperate bookings a few times of SYD-BNE-SIN-MEL-SYD and SIN-BKK-SIN.
In SYD they issue all 3 boarding passes and check luggage through to final destination BKK. In BKK when flying AY to SIN they will only issue boarding pass to SIN, but luggage is checked through to airport where I will clear Australian immigration, and I need to go to tansit counter in SIN to pick up remaining boarding passes. Weird that on the last trip I was forced on to Swiss Air and they issued 2 boarding passes as well as checking luggage through to MEL and I had to get domestic boarding pass in MEL.
If find it odd that AY only issues boarding pass through to SIN whereas Swiss, who is no longer part of OneWorld, can issue boarding pass through to Australia.
Member of: AA Exec Plat; QF LTG; PC Plat; HHonors Gold
Posts: 10,055
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnK
In BKK when flying AY to SIN they will only issue boarding pass to SIN, but luggage is checked through to airport where I will clear Australian immigration, and I need to go to tansit counter in SIN to pick up remaining boarding passes.
This is likely because AY ground services are provided by a third party in BKK. They do not have enough demand to have their own staff there, so it will be contracted to another airline or company. And it would seem they use a different organisation to QF and Swiss.
In BKK when flying AY to SIN they will only issue boarding pass to SIN, but luggage is checked through to airport where I will clear Australian immigration, and I need to go to tansit counter in SIN to pick up remaining boarding passes.
This is likely because AY ground services are provided by a third party in BKK. They do not have enough demand to have their own staff there, so it will be contracted to another airline or company. And it would seem they use a different organisation to QF and Swiss.
It would seem that way.
I thought check-in staff were employed directly by the airport rather than a third party organisation. Oh well, you learn something new everyday. Is that the case in Australia?
Location: Home, Work, Airport, Here (not in that order!)
Posts: 4,518
Re: boarding passes
Quote:
Originally Posted by minore
thank you for your replies my 1st flight is with qantaslink and my inter. flight is wiyh qantas when returning i am allways issued with inter and domestic boarding paases.
Hmmm. This does sound a little weird.
Can you tell us the departing airport and the QF Intl flight number/destination?
Location: Home, Work, Airport, Here (not in that order!)
Posts: 4,518
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnK
I thought check-in staff were employed directly by the airport rather than a third party organisation. Oh well, you learn something new everyday. Is that the case in Australia?
Major city airports (domestic) - normally staff employed by the airline.
Aust International airport - a mix of Qantas staffers and third parties I believe.
Smaller airports - a mix of third party and Qantas employees.
It's funny to watch "changeover time" at BKK airport and see the staffers stop being X company and turn in Y company.
In BKK when flying AY to SIN they will only issue boarding pass to SIN, but luggage is checked through to airport where I will clear Australian immigration, and I need to go to tansit counter in SIN to pick up remaining boarding passes.
This is likely because AY ground services are provided by a third party in BKK. They do not have enough demand to have their own staff there, so it will be contracted to another airline or company. And it would seem they use a different organisation to QF and Swiss.
It would seem that way.
JohnK, one suggestion to try an get it working is to call up AY and ask them to put the QF sectors in the AY PNR as an information or passive sector. This way when you check in in BKK for your BKK-SIN flight, they can see the SIN-MEL-SYD sectors. I have found this method quite successful in getting bookings linked together for checkin.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnK
I thought check-in staff were employed directly by the airport rather than a third party organisation. Oh well, you learn something new everyday. Is that the case in Australia?
It is for some airlines. For example UA has just offloaded all of their staff in Australia and sub-contracted it out... Their call centres now route through to Manila, and they are now represented by third party employees at the airport (I do not know who... sorry).
It has caused quite a few issues in the past week or so where as they are using a new system, the staff are not fully aware of everything, and some passengers have missed out on some of their UA benefits and in one case a passenger missed their flight!
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