Where do I pick up my checked bag in EWR to recheck ( SXM-EWR- ORD)?

amsmulko

SBH Insider
I'm at SXM and will be going SXM-EWR-ORD. During my connection do I go to the main baggage claim area?
 
I believe you pick up your luggage first and then clear customs. Just outside of customs there is a place you can give your luggage if you are tagged all the way to ORD. If you are only tagged to EWR, I believe you may have to take your luggage to the airline counter and recheck it. Check just outside of customs if you can recheck your luggage there.
 
Thank you all for helping!!!

UPDATE:
We arrived on time at EWR but United kept us on the tarmac for an hour so we took the flight EWR-ORD the next day. I recommend if anyone is going through EWR to give yourself more than 1.5 hours.

I had to check a bag in this time, but if you are going through SXM please do carry on only AND PRINT your boarding pass both directions (no mobile). Checked bags mean entering and re-rentering SXM which will easily take an hour plus.
 
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Sorry you had to spend the night in EWR. We believe 2 hours even is best for layover these days on connecting flights, especially international.
 
United will now check bags directly to and from SBH, so there's no need for "carry on only" if you fly United. When you arrive or are leaving SXM, simply take the in transit route through the airport and avoid all the hell.
 
Hello Jeanette,
I am very interested in your actual experience. Curious how United transfers checked bags directly to SBH? Do they contract with a 3rd party handler? We mostly fly United from Washington Dulles to St. Maarten. Actually, doing so this coming Saturday.
 
Glad to hear that Jeanette. Hopefully other airlines will soon join what United has done. American used to do it. Sure saves a lot of hassle. We fly thru Pr so have to clear customs and agriculture there. Tradewind doesn’t check all the way to final destination.
 
Hello Jeanette,
I am very interested in your actual experience. Curious how United transfers checked bags directly to SBH? Do they contract with a 3rd party handler? We mostly fly United from Washington Dulles to St. Maarten. Actually, doing so this coming Saturday.

Hi DT6,

My actual experience won't happen until February. I booked tickets for my daughter and her boyfriend from EWR-SBH. It was tricky to do from the United site, but I found a workaround using Google. I did so after I saw a friend's Instagram post with a United boarding pass from EWR to SBH.

I assume United has their own staff in SXM that will unload luggage and route it to SBH as necessary. We flew St. Barth Commuter on our last trip and they fetched our luggage as a courtesy. This time we're fly Winair, so routing her luggage directly to SBH will let her use the in transit path to the gate - a huge time saver.

Wishing you a fabulous trip! I am six weeks behind you. It will be my first trip with both of my children and I am over the moon about sharing time with them on the island.
 
I can't speak to the current arrangement with United. In the past, there was an interline agreement with Winair. In order to be eligible for baggage to be shipped from your US origin airport and all of the way to SBH you had to buy both your mainline UA ticket and your inter-island WM ticket on the same itinerary. Using St Barth Commuter as your inter-island airline was not an option, and many found that the cost of the Winair ticket purchased through UA was significantly higher than purchasing it direct from Winair. If you do book both UA and WM on the same itinerary then the tagging of your bags all of the way to SBH should happen automatically. Check the bag tags to be sure.

Re: Tradewind, sure they do, with UA, AA, and BA. Same rules, both Tradewind and your mainline tickets must be purchased on the same itinerary. Same caveat, there may be a price difference.

When returning to the US, no matter how your bags are tagged, you must reclaim them prior to Customs, and recheck them after Customs. Some airlines at some airports have a convenient bag check as you exit the Customs area. Not all airlines, and not all airports do. (SJU, for example, has none in its current configuration, which involves clearing Customs in Terminal A). If there is no convenient bag check then you must take your bags to your airline's checkin counter.

Everyone returning to the US with an ongoing connecting flight must also re-clear TSA security before they can proceed to their gate.
 
Hi Kevin. I did have to buy all legs of her ticket directly from United and, surprisingly, found it to be less expensive than buying each ticket separately. I was not aware that bags checked from SBH had to be claimed in SXM and then re-checked. This takes away a huge advantage of an inter-airline agreement.

I read in a previous post that United let passengers go through a separate line after checking bags which saved 30 minutes or so in SXM. I am hoping we have this option or I may be using a VIP service for the first time.
 
Jeanette, I don't know how it works in SXM, as I haven't gone home through there in years. It may work exactly as you hope. I was referring to arrival in the US.
 
. . . I was not aware that bags checked from SBH had to be claimed in SXM and then re-checked. This takes away a huge advantage of an inter-airline agreement.
I’m not sure how far you have to go today to re-check . . . in pre-Irma days, it was quite easy, as I recall — only a matter of carrying bags 50 / 60 feet or so from the arrival conveyor belt to nearby airline check-in desks located in the baggage hall. Please let us know your experience!
 
Kevin - thanks. Good to hear you weren't referring to SXM. I priced flying to SJU and using Tradewinds and it was $4-5k more expensive for the five of us. We'll be arriving on JetBlue, United and Delta from BOS, EWR and JFK.

Dennis - I am not so much worried about the distance, but the duration. We had to re-check my daughter's bag in early August and it took us two hours to get to our gate. I can only imagine high season is worse. I am thrilled United will check from SBH to EWR. Going through the in Transit line path this time will be a breeze, relatively speaking.

Hopper - Yes, I was able to get United boarding passes from EWR-SBH and SBH-EWR. A friend confirmed United checked her bags from EWR straight through to SBH a few weeks ago. Hooray.
 
Just to stress one part of this (as already mentioned by Kevin) my experience is that the first key to doing this on international connecting flights is having one ticket or itinerary. So even if (in this case) United and Winair have an agreement or even it is the exact same airline, the flights have to be booked on one itinerary or the "agreement" doesn't help you.

We just booked from Italy to JFK connecting through Paris and after almost booking the flights separately in $'s (would have been much cheaper), we ended up doing it as one ticket using miles and luckily we did because with 2 separate tickets we would not likely have enough time to make our second flight because we would have needed to retrieve and recheck our luggage. The other benefit is that with one itinerary if your first flight is late and that causes you to miss your second flight it is normally up to them to get you to your final destination on a subsequent flight at no additional cost to you.
 
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