<p>D is planning to study at U of Helsinki next fall, and I am working on getting her flights arranged. She and I are going together for some traveling in northern Europe before her term starts, too. So we are flying over together, and I am returning alone via Icelandair all the way to and from our hometown. Good fares, no bag fees, shortest flights, etc.</p>
<p>However, Icelandair does not fly back to our hometown in the winter. So I can’t just purchase a round trip for her with a different return date from mine. I have to find her a one way ticket home in December.</p>
<p>After using many search engines (including fly.com, bing.com, momondo.com, kayak.com), and looking at Icelandair’s website, I found I can get her from Helskini back to New York or Boston very cheaply on Icelandair. Then fly her home from there. The total cost of the flights via Icelandair, then a separately booked domestic ticket would be almost $1,000 less than anything the search engines found. Same number of stops, about the same number of hours. Icelandair does not seem to be in their searches at all.</p>
<p>So my questions are:
What happens to her luggage? She will have a couple of checked bags for sure. When she gets to the US, will she have to retrieve her checked luggage and recheck on the domestic airline (probably Delta), since I can’t check purchase her tickets all at once?
What is a reasonable amount of time to allow her to get (1) through customs, (2) get her luggage, and (3) recheck the luggage on the new airline and get her boarding passes? She will be flying through either JFK or Boston. Any sense of which of those airports is easier to navigate as well?</p>
<p>She’d need to have her luggage clear customs when she lands in NY/Boston anyway so it should be no big deal to re-check them on her next flight.</p>
<p>I’d try to generally leave 2 hours to get through immigration, customs, get to the other gate, and re-check her bags. For the boarding pass - she should be able to print that out online beforehand although if she’s going to re-cehck the luggage she could get it then as well.</p>
<p>She should also try to have an idea of what the later flights are on that last segment just in case her first flight is delayed.</p>
<p>You might also want to go online to the airport (JFK/Bos) and get an idea of the relative distance between the two airlines’ gates since it can sometimes be in different terminals (likely) and far apart.</p>
<p>Someone on CC once recommended this site:
[ITA</a> Software: Login](<a href=“http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch]ITA”>http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch)
You can log on as a guest, and can look for pretty much every available flight option there is. Once you find something you like, then you can go to that airlines website and book it. It has a lot of information, and you might need to narrow down your search, or the results can be overwhelming.</p>
<p>I would give it more than two hours-- if she arrives in boston she will have to clear customs, pick up her bag (could possibly take a long time at a busy airport), recheck the bag, switch terminals, and then reclear security. The terminal buses around logan aren’t super frequent, and the would have to go from E-A. At least once she got to A, it would be pretty quick because the lines there usually aren’t too crazy.</p>
<p>The same is probably true for JFK, since it is a delta hub and I assume that the domestic flights are not out of the international terminal. At JFK they at least have monorail service between terminals, but it can still be a long walk to your gate. </p>
<p>I would leave at least three hours to do all of this, since its not so much fun to be running with lots of bags through an airport. You also need to factor in delays in the icelandair flight. Also, since this ticket would be from two different airlines, you would be at the mercy of delta if you miss the delta flight, since it wasn;t their fault that you missed the connection.</p>
<p>I spent more time researching fares and options tonight, and decided it is cheapest and least stressful for her to just stay in a hotel in Boston near the airport overnight, then fly out in the morning. It is still cheaper to do that by a few hundred dollars than any of the other flight options I can find. And the only flights late enough out of JFK or Boston that night were expensive AND had another stop, making it a 3 stop day.</p>
<p>So… that raises another question. She is 20 years old. Will there be any issue with her staying in a hotel room alone without someone over 21? I am a little vague on whether this is an issue or not. Couldn’t see anything obvious on the hotel web site about it, but have not actually booked the room yet, either.</p>
<p>IIRC, Icelandair is an IATA member, so they should be able to check bags through to other IATA-member airlines (not Southwest). If the time between flights is less than 24 hours, she should be able to pick up her bag after customs and take it to where bags are rechecked after arriving into the US. I think that having to go out to the airline counters and recheck bags (not the same thing as the previous situation) would be needlessly difficult. As for a 20 year old staying alone in a hotel, hotels should allow it (especially in Europe), but call the hotel beforehand just to make sure.</p>
So we are flying over together, and I am returning alone via Icelandair all the way to and from our hometown. Good fares, no bag fees, shortest flights, etc.</p>