Unprotected connections - proceed with caution…
Recently, you would’ve seen me extolling the virtues of connecting flights - specifically those that are protected. I explicitly left out talking about unprotected connections because that would infinitely complicate the article. Today, I’ll cover what are the benefits and the big risks of unprotected connections - plus a little on my own experiences.
What is an unprotected connection?
Let’s take an example - specifically of a routing I took recently - I took a flight from Copenhagen to Rome on Singapore Airlines, then Rome to London on British Airways. Besides the long way home, I specifically opted for this because the seats on the flights were lay flat and provide good blog content. The problem here is that I needed to book the flights on separate tickets since Singapore Airlines and British Airways do not partner on flights, whilst no travel agents could issue the flights on the same tickets. I took the flights and thankfully, I made it on time - but not without a bit of stress.
Unprotected connections are not for the faint hearted.
The biggest issue is missing your next flight. The incoming aircraft on Singapore Airlines arrived around 60 minutes late, delaying our flight - and our connection in Rome was three hours long. Had the flight been delayed any further it could have been a big issue resulting in us missing the flight from Rome to London. Thankfully this was not the case - but a short connection between two separate flights could cause you major headaches and an expensive last minute ticket to get to your ultimate destination.
To avoid this, make sure you pad out your connection as much as possible. For example, if you’re flying from Stockholm to Asia to pay a lot less on a Business Class flight - then do not leave yourself a short connection. Miss your flight from London to Stockholm or it’s delayed causing you to miss the long haul flight and this will ruin your holiday and hit you in the pocket. I advise in cases like this to book the earliest flight out, or the night before, to ensure that if your flight is delayed or cancelled you can be booked onto the next available journey and be less worried about missing the unprotected connecting flight. Even better, in a scenario like this, why not spend a whole day in the city of your long haul departure. This way you have less stress around missing your connecting flight and you get to experience a second city during the journey.
Next is baggage. Hold baggage can be a problem on unprotected connections as the airline on the first sector, in my example Singapore Airlines for Copenhagen to Rome, is not legally bound to connect my luggage through to British Airways.
The options you have are to first travel light and travel with hand baggage only, this means that regardless of what happens all you will need to do is walk between your arriving and departure gate easily. The second option is to have enough time to collect your luggage at the airport and recheck it with the next airline. I would easily recommend in this scenario that there is at least 4-5 hours between flights to do this - even that may be pushing things if there is a delay.
The final baggage option is requesting nicely to the agent at check in if they can check the bags through to the final destination. There are no guarantees they will say yes - but you may get lucky as I did. First, come armed with all the facts - check who the first airline of your journey has interline agreements with. An interline agreement is effectively where two airlines agree to accept and connect baggage between their flights. You can find this by searching Google for “[airline name] interline partners’ - although few airlines publicise this on their website directly and you will probably end up on a forum like FlyerTalk. An example of this is here for Singapore Airlines. Do this prior to getting to the airport and take a screenshot, it may come in handy. Also have a check to see on forums such as FlyerTalk whether people have any success with check through on separate tickets on the airline you are checking in with.
Once at check-in, ask them if they can check through the baggage to your final destination showing a print out of the connecting journey. Here they will most likely say no - as initially happened when I checked in - but you may get lucky. When I attempted this at the check of Singapore Airlines’ Star Alliance partner SAS, they said no - saying it could not be done. I insisted that Singapore Airlines had an interline agreement with British Airways and could check through the luggage - which she was able to do after a couple minutes of investigating.
Be aware that some airlines may have interline agreements, but will never check through luggage on separate tickets. Although in my example Singapore Airlines checked the luggage through to British Airways, in no circumstances will British Airways check through to an interline agreement partner on separate tickets.
Even if you can check your luggage through to the final destination, they probably won’t be able to issue your boarding pass. This prior to Covid was not an issue as there was digital boarding passes; now due to vaccination document checks there is a risk you may still have to collect a physical boarding pass if the connecting flight airline cannot digitally verify your documents.
For the vast majority of travellers, do not attempt to do this - it’s not for those who aren’t willing to have a little extra stress during your holiday. Take the easier route either on a direct flight or protected connecting flight. For those willing to take the risk, you will be rewarded particularly if it is a preferable travel experience - just be prepared to have hiccups on the way.
