Q. I will be flying on Southwest Airlines, connecting in Nashville, and traveling onward to Charleston. I purchased two separate fares (to Nashville and onward from Nashville) to save money. I’m thinking that I’ll need to pick up my bags to check them in for the connection to Charleston. Can Southwest check my bags through to Charleston, even if I didn’t buy a through fare, so that I don’t have to be groped by TSA twice?
A. This should be possible. The ticketing agent would place a transfer tag plus a final destination tag on your bag. But you’d need to have enough time between connecting flights for the bag transfer, and your connection shouldn’t be more than four hours between flights because airport baggage holding areas have limited storage space and a long connecting time might be grounds for refusal.
