Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/19/airline-luggage-scam-carry-on-sizes-slashed-by-55.html
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Just in the interests of precision; I suspect that it’s a second-order blatant cash grab:
The “rush to ram improbable amounts of improbable carry-on into the overhead compartments” boarding phenomenon is a real problem; but it cropped up in no small part because of checked bag fees. Before those were a major thing being fanatical about carry on was more about the people who were really serious about the time saved by getting out of the airport without a visit to baggage claim, often frequent travelers and efficient packers; and less about people who had been told that it was $50 cheaper to find some way of getting it into the overhead compartment than it was to let it go into the cargo area.
That doesn’t meant that it’s not a cash grab, it certainly is; but it can only be properly understood in the context of the larger cash grab it’s intertwined with.
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I just flew on Southwest last week and was actually pleasantly surprised about how large of carry-ons they were allowing, especially since they’re a budget airline. I’ve flown other carriers that are far worse about trying to enforce unreasonably small bag sizes.
I’ve never flown Ryanair but I’ve certainly heard plenty of bad stuff about that airline. They were the ones who were investigating the concept of getting rid of seats and making the passengers stand for the whole flight, but were stopped by regulators:
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I wouldn’t mind so much about carry on rules if airlines didn’t lose or damage my checked bags a significant percentage of the time. (I think I’m at around 3-5% now)
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Guess it’s time for passengers to start showing up at airports with washing machine-sized cardboard boxes, like a flash mob. Maybe the airlines would get a clue.
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Several years before the pandemic, I needed to buy a small carry-on suitcase for a short trip on Air Canada, and checked their dimension requirements. Then I was looking around a luggage store (I forget which, but it was a chain) and in the store they had an Air-Canada brand small suitcase. I measured it, and its dimensions were over the limit. (To be fair, Air Canada may have simply outsourced their suitcase branding to a third party who weren’t giving it a lot of thought.)
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I pretty much just ignore the carry on size limits. Not that I carry on giant bags, but I have never had my carry on measured. I have a wonderfully compact hanging bag that rolls up into a tube. It violates the length limit of all carry-on restrictions, but the flight crew either doesn’t care or are too busy getting passengers loaded.
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Check-in counters and bag drops here in Germany often have plastic boxes of the appropriate size that carry-on luggage is supposed to fit into, for verification. I don’t think I’ve actually seen them used a lot, but the amount of carry-on stuff – both in terms of size and number of items – that some passengers bring with them (and seem to get away with) often baffles me.
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In my experience flying domestically in USA, American Airlines is the worst (read overly zealous) about enforcing carry-on baggage dimensions. On a flight for a ski trip in March where I’d already paid to check my ski bag, they wrongly forced me to gate-check my roll-aboard (which had my ski boots and clothing necessary to ski in case checked bag didn’t make connection).
Long story short: connection was missed, checked bags made connection without me and we were reunited 3 days later (weather caused 2 additional days of delays!). Only silver lining was the baggage agent at my final destination helping file a proper delayed baggage claim which allowed me to shop and rent gear on AA’s dime.
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This one?
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Who is this man? Is he a professional basketball player? I don’t have a sample nearby to measure, but 40cm sounds extreme to me.
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Not quite but very similar!
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I’ve flown SW a lot over the last couple decades, there was a time almost once a month for a few years.
They have always been fairly lenient - sometimes to a fault - but when things are getting jammed up there, they will check it at the plane, no arguments…
Also, their checked bag policy is pretty generous IMO…
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I’m a UK11 foot, which is above average. My shoes are about 32cm long.
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The last time I was in airports, there were similar metal-framed things to do just this, but they were in general areas, IIRC, so not airline-specific. Yeah, it’s been a while, but it implies that there was once, if not a standard, at least some informal common agreement on the matter. Now, it seems every airline takes its own view and those metal-framed things are at risk of being irrelevant, depending on who you are flying with.
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Those luggage sizers are no better than rigged carnival games. I’ve never seen a suitcase of the stated size actually fit in one. If I see the gate agent insisting on using one, I give up in advance and just check my roll-aboard (despite knowing for a fact it will fit easily into the overhead bin on any widebody Boeing or Airbus jet).
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Sure, but if you CAN get your bag in there, you should expect to be safe. Seems not, any more, with even more restrictive size requirements with some airlines.
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This
When people state “I never have a bag problem”, I’m thinking they don’t fly American.
On the last flight we had on American (one of those 5am flights), the gate person gave a second look at my partners bag and questioning the size. My sleepy partner quipped back that it has never been a problem before with other carriers. The gate person did not like the tone and went into authoritarian mode and checked the bag out of what felt like spite. A minute later we are handing the bag to the bag crew person, who was apparently already mad about something else, and exclaimed loudly “this is not a gate check!” as he tossed it down the slide.
Ok… no big deal, we made the plane and will be in full on vacation mode by dinner time, right? Nope, this was only a prelude for what American Airlines had planned for us this trip.
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Ok so definitely not… this one?
or this one?
or… this one? Hey, you can roll it up? And keep it shut with a piece of rope:
ETA:
Whatever happened to the glamour, the special event-ness of air travel?
Ye gods I feel old.
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It’s waaaaay more than $50 these days. Just flew Iberia and checked luggage of the smallest size starts at 75€ for 15 kilos (basically the weight of the bag itself) and goes up 15€ for every kilo after. Their website is a contradictory disaster, though so who knows what you actually get charged at the counter. We carried everything coming in so that we could bring back a checked bag, so we’ll find out soon enough.
I once got my bag stuck in one of those damn things. Never again.
Yeah, the only time I’ve had a bag problem was on American. I was in the Army and they lost all of my uniforms. American and United are the absolute pits. I won’t even consider a flight on them if there is an alternative. The Walmart of the skies.
Edit for typo
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