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Let's say you're transiting through London with checked bags. The airline refuses to short-check your luggage. You then proceed to miss the second flight, forcing them to take your bags off the airplane. The following questions arise:

  1. Is it guaranteed that the airline won't fly your bags without yourself on the plane?

  2. Can they legally force some sort of a financial penalty for skipping the second flight?

  3. Is it generally legal (as in, not a crime) to do this?

  4. Are other complications likely to arise, e.g. a long talk with the airport security to make sure you're not a terrorist who's got cold feet?

hippietrail
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JonathanReez
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3 Answers3

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  1. No. If the bag is supposed to be offloaded, mistakes happen and the bag could proceed to the destination without you.
  2. Yes. If they have it in their terms and conditions such as KLM, then the passenger may have agreed to pay this fee and therefore the airline is capable of requiring you to pay it. They may not insist on payment depending on circumstances. For example:

    ...I wanted to break my flight [from Muscat to LHR] in ams rather than fly to LHR... I was told in the ams lounge that the cost to search for my bags would be 275 euros [per bag].

  3. Yes. People's plans change all the times. Business travellers may be informed on landing that they need to be somewhere else. An illness or death may have occurred within the family. The passenger may be sick themselves. These things happen and airlines are capable of dealing with them.
  4. Possibly. You may be required to go through additional screening of yourself and your bags, but this would be highly variable.
user56reinstatemonica8
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Berwyn
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3

Is it guaranteed that the airline won't fly your bags without yourself on the plane?

Pretty much, yes. I respectfully disagree with Berwyn on this, if such a mistake would happen then people would get fired for breaching security. See my answer Why can't I travel onwards if my bag wasn't going to make the flight? here and Moyli's comment on it.

Community
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Just this summer I had a connection at ORD where for fare reasons I could have made a second leg flight before the one on which I was booked. One of my two bags went on the earlier, more expensive flight without me, while the other was inexplicably delayed until the second day following.

I would so not count on this as a gimmick for baggage retrieval.

Andrew Lazarus
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