Leaving Flight Advice

I may be wrong about this as I have not been to Dublin

HOWEVER

I thought I have read.... on this site..... that you clear US customs in Dublin. Thus your bags would be checked through to LAX.

Others please correct or confirm this.

That is correct. Bags will be checked through to final destination.

And then since you wouldn't be on the Newark to LAX flight, your bags would probably be taken off and maybe destroyed?

Destroyed? Well that's a new scare tactic. Highly unlikely. Probably will be held for you to pick up, but.....there are some risks

1. Your luggage gets lost or stolen. You are not there to file a claim. When you show up, too bad!

2. The airline will now know what you did and can reprice your fare and hit your credit card with a fare adjustment

Aer Lingus has a 10 kg (22#) carry-on weight limit for each of you. Pack light, carry on, and your problem goes away.

The information you received earlier is correct. You will go through U.S. Immigration and Customs in Dublin. It is a pre-clearance airport. (That means when you arrive in Newark it will be like a domestic flight and you just get off the plane and go.) Your bag, however, will be checked all the way through to LAX.

You should price one way tickets and round trip from L.A to NY and I think you will find the RT is not much more. My suggestion is to find the extra time and spend more than one night in NYC. It is the "greastest city in the world"* and you will be glad you spent the time.

*--I'm biased. I was born and raised there.

Getting from Newark into Manhattan is a slog. And expensive. Then getting from wherever you stay back to EWR, or to JFK or LGA will be another expensive and slow slog. Between ~$60 for a cab, down to $15/ea for public transport, and at least an hour into the city. Depending on which airport you fly back out of and where you stay, allow min. 1 hour and min. $7.75/ea transit to fly out, up to 2 hours and $60 for a cab. The cheapest way is slowest (but sometimes fastest when road traffic is bad), shuttle buses are med. slow and med. priced, and cabs are very expensive and timing could be fast or slow, depending on traffic. Playing it safe, allow two hours transit each way and plan to spend $60 each way.

We have three airports, but none of them are easy, quick, or cheap to get to. It's barely worth extending this layover just so you can say you were in NYC. Plan a separate trip another time.

My husband and I are traveling from Dublin, Ireland to LAX and have a
layover in Newark. I would like to leave our Aer Lingus/United flight
there at Newark so we can stay the night in NYC - he has never been. I
tried to work with the airline on our original flight, but they
wouldn't change the United Neward/LAX flight time to allow this. So, I
would book a one way flight home from a NY airport on a different
airline. I think this will work - we have to retrieve our checked
baggage for customs anyhow and we won't do the subsequent flight on
the same airline. Is there anything I'm not thinking of that wouldn't
allow this?

If you really want to come into Manhattan and stay the night and you want your luggage with you, don't check your bag at the Dublin airport. Checked in luggage will probably go directly through to LAX. Also, checked in luggage will NOT be destroyed no matter how someone here might try to scare you. Could the checked in luggage get lost however? Yes. I don't know if your airline at Newark might remove the luggage from the connection to LAX if you're not on board. Probably not. This is why you need to carry your luggage with you if you decide that you want to take an extra night in Manhattan and fly to LAX the next day on a separate flight.

It's easy getting into Manhattan from Newark. Take the Airtrain to the NJ Transit airport rail station and then take a NJ Transit train into New York Penn Station. Then spend the night in the city.

The next day, you have the choice of JFK and Newark airports. Maybe you can find a cheaper one way to LAX from JFK. If so, great. It's easy getting to JFK. You can either take the Long Island Railroad from Penn Station to Jamaica and take the Airtrain to your terminal or take the subway (E train to Jamaica to Airtrain or A train to Howard Beach to Airtrain).

I would be truly surprised ( and disappointed) if your luggage was transferred to a flight you are not on. Probably cause some delay for the flight at the gate while your baggage was taken off the plane, so you will not be making friends with UA personnel.

Where they put/store such luggage and how easy it is to retrieve is an interesting question.

The only way your plan works is to have only carry on luggage. Otherwise you may be spending a major portion of your time re-uniting with your bags.

"I would be truly surprised ( and disappointed) if your luggage was transferred to a flight you are not on. Probably cause some delay for the flight at the gate while your baggage was taken off the plane, so you will not be making friends with UA personnel."

You probably should be disappointed daily.

Matching of luggage to passengers does not routinely occur on domestic US flights so the flight would take off with their luggage on it!

Matching of luggage to passengers does not routinely occur on domestic US flights so the flight would take off with their luggage on it!

I would be truly surprised (and worried) if that is so. Letting luggage stay on a plane without the owner on board is totally forbidden.
I have been on flights where there was a "no show" at the gate, and they unloaded all the luggage onto the tarmac and the remaining passengers had to each identify their luggage before it was put back on the plane.

This has been so for decades. The most well known result of a bag getting on a connecting flight, but the passenger not, resulted in the Lockerbie disaster.