As I was getting ready for the trip I was told that a new airport is opening in Hyderabad the day I am scheduled to land. Then I found that there was a strike being planed by the airport workers and a storm was forming in the Indian Ocean. So, I knew it was going to be a challenging trip and was ready to face these. None of these really was a problem eventually. The most difficulty was in London and was mostly software related.
I got to London Heathrow a little before 4AM for my 6:30AM flight. When I checked in at London at the "Quick checkin" Lufthansa system, it asked if I wanted to checkin to Frankfurt or all the way to Chennai (I spent the day in Chennai before heading to Hyderabad). I took the latter of course, but the system only printed the boarding pass up to Frankfurt.
So, I waited for the "Quick Dropoff" counter to open around 4:30AM and explained what had happened. The lady said she will try to check me in and the system promptly checked by bags to Frankfurt. Since that is not what I want, she cancelled my baggage checkin and said I have to go to another counter to get my boarding pass for entire journey and pointed me to the long line. The line had gotten four times longer in the 30 minutes I since I arrived and I told her "sorry, it makes nonsense" for me to fall in that line.
She acknowledged and took me directly to a counter. The attendant at that checkin counter quickly said that I must be in another airline for part of my trip and so I did not have a boarding pass. I explained to her that is not the case. Then she said, that Frankfurt has not opened up for boarding and so I have to claim my bags in Frankfurt and recheck-in. I told her I have no problem getting a boarding pass in Frankfurt, but checking the bags back in Frankfurt is out of question since there is not enough time to do that between my connections. Besides, I am with the same airline and the trip is part of one reservation. So I said checking in my bags to Chennai is the only option. She spent several minutes looking at the system and said, I don't think we can do that. The system is not showing your trip beyond Frankfurt for baggage checkin. I politely said "ok, then you need to ask for help."
She calls out to the supervisor who pretty much repeats the above sequence at first, and then said, "we have a new system and it is not working right. I need to manually add your other flight here, but I don't know how to do it." She then calls out to another person who knows how to work the new system and she instructs what commands to type. The supervisor had to repeat the steps three times over. First attempt checked one of my bags to Chennai and the other to Frankfurt. She cancelled the whole thing (for the forth time now since the beginning) and had to check the bags in separately.
Anyway, after about 20 minutes (50 minutes after my arrival) and four agents, the bags were checked in. I still had only boarding pass until Frankfurt, but, no worries, I got my boarding pass in Frankfurt.
It took a supervisor to find that the computer was at error. Once she figured the problem, she was able to work the system. I am quite happy that they finally handled it well and I hope they get to fix their system real soon.
I was not so lucky last month when I travelled to Finland. I had two separate reservations, one between Finland to Denmark and the other between Denmark to US, but both on SAS. When I checked-in in Finland, I was told that I must check my bags out in Copenhagen and recheck in (During a previous trip United agent checked my bags direct through four different legs, three different reservations). When I asked why, I was told "That is a SAS policy." Fortunately I had 3 hours between
connections and I took good part of that time to recheck in. Then I found that SAS only credited 1000 miles of the 5000 miles to the United Mileage Plus. Looks like SAS has policies that does not favor customer convenience and such policies are not inviting me to fly them on my next trip.
