According to an exclusive on Australian Business Traveller, Qatar Airways are no longer going to adhere to the draconian oneworld alliance rules on transfer baggage. This is excellent news indeed, especially for people like me who have upcoming travel with the airline.
Why The Big Deal?
Last year the alliance decided to stop checking baggage through to other airlines in the alliance when transferring to another flight on a separate ticket. The reason for this is to prevent airlines being liable financially for baggage lost on tickets they are not earning any revenue from.
You would think the airlines in an alliance as good as oneworld proclaims to be could come to some kind of agreement when it comes to baggage for people using separate tickets but apparently not.
Frequent Flyers Hit Hardest
Frequent flyers are particularly hard hit by this rule. These are the people most likely to book some tickets with cash and others with frequent flyer miles. Essentially this means the alliance is targeting their most savvy flyers which is quite unfortunate.
Transfer Sense
AusBT reports that Qatar Airways will allow interlining on separate tickets once again from 1 March 2017. Some airlines in the alliance continue to allow through check when on a separate ticket. These are Cathay Pacific, Japan Air Lines and Malaysia Airlines. Others choose to follow the rule, including American Airlines, British Airways, Iberia and Qantas.
oneworld market themselves as a premium alliance for business travellers. I believe any kind of premium alliance should allow interlining on separate tickets. The other alliances apparently don’t allow this either, but that should be even more reason to differentiate. Airlines are of course free to exceed the minimum alliance standard.
Qatar will allow the transfers as long as minimum connection time at the airport is adhered to which makes perfect sense to me. You would have to be some fool to try to book separate tickets to reduce that!
Overall Thoughts
This is excellent news for me. I am flying Qatar and have some separate ticket connections coming up in April. It will save me a huge headache and a massive amount of stress on what are very long flights to the other side of the world. Utterly delighted would be an understatement! I daresay other people will also welcome this news.
Thank for you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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I have a flight in January on British Airways connecting in London to Qatar for Sri Lanka. Will I be able to interline my luggage?
If it is all one ticket, your luggage will be checked through. It is only if you have separate tickets where BA will not do it. Have a good flight!
Did not work for me yesterday on QR. CX on the other hand did offer it proactively in January without me mentioning a second flight.
That’s not good to hear. What route was it? I’ll be interested to see if they check me through on my upcoming flights in April. It’s one to watch! Thanks for the comment.
QR – DOH-GVA connecting on Iberia (operated by Vueling) was not possible
CX – HKG-ZRH connection on Iberia (operated by Vueling) worked
Interesting! I’ll let you know how mine goes. It will be PSA-DOH-AKL on QR connecting to LA for AKL-SYD. Cross fingers!
I was very happily surprised the other day when CX accepted my interline bag to NH!!! They had been declining interline transfers which pissed me off. All full service carriers should interline. This is a reason we fly them over the LCCs!
I completely agree with you! Apparently some airlines in oneworld are still interlining on separate tickets, while some are following the agreement where it won’t be done. Even then, some agents on the airlines not interlining on separate tickets are still doing it as the systems allow them to do so. It’s all very confusing and annoying when it just doesn’t have to be. Thanks for the comment!