Airline luggage scam: Carry-on sizes slashed by 55%

This shrinkage has changed the lives of touring musicians. I can no longer fit my $7000 musical instrument into carry-on, & I won’t check it. So…last gig I did, I drove 900 miles to get there. And it may be literally my last gig.

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Guilty. I also don’t fly United. I will skip the trip before I fly United.

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More like this one:

But with a shoulder strap and 800 denier black nylon instead of a flour tortilla. :wink:

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Yeah, but can you get it through Customs in other countries? :wink:

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Definitely not in Australia.

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Before Covid I used to fly European short-haul fairly often for business reasons. On a typical 1-3 night trip I would always take my carry-on spinner case because I could fit everything in it I needed. Very convenient.

All the different airlines have slightly different dimensions allowed, by a couple of cm each way but no-one ever checked. What is the point of carry-on if you can’t carry it on?

Everything is getting worse, isn’t it?

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Surely 32cm is longer than a foot

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In German, the expression for checking in one’s bags is “das Gepäck aufgeben”, which literally means “to give up one’s luggage”. This can be prophetic in more than one sense.

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For the last 15 years or more, if at all possible DH and I use carryon luggage only. Both of us have backpacks (Jansport, dating from a 40 year ago summer in Australia, and Osprey) that fit under the seat in front of us in case greedy bastids use up all the overhead bins. We also take along clothing that is, while nice enough to be worn, on its last legs. We wear it where we don’t have to impress anyone, like if we are spending all day driving or hiking, and abandon it at the end with impunity.

We had a couple of episodes where this proved very beneficial. On one flight, the overhead bin above us was too small for even a rolling suitcase, but perfectly fit DH’s backpack, giving extra leg room. We also ditched 2/3 of the clothes we brought with us on a 3 week trip to Britain, and filled up the one checked bag with souvenirs. This made the customs agent very nonplussed, as most of it was tabletop minis we couldn’t get in the US.

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12 inches is 30.5cm on my British dual scale tape measure.

My shoe is longer than my foot so 32cm is indeed longer than a foot. My foot is actually 11 inches. I just measured it. I don’t know but I suspect that British shoe sizes are basically foot length in inches.

Ugh! I am so sorry to hear this. I hope it didn’t dampen the vacay too much!

As someone who has flown a lot for business since before there were checked bag policies, one thing people forget is that they were originally justified (or so the airlines claimed) by the increased fuel costs at the time. I recall reading articles where airlines claimed that once fuel prices came back down the fees would go away. I told a friend at the time that I’d cut off my right arm if that ever happened. Of course flying became immediately worse not only with the fee payments (of which I assume $0 go to improving the handling of checked bags) but also with the stampede to board to avoid losing out on overhead space, gamesmanship about bag sizes, etc.

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I mean…a decent number of people already do that.

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Not enough of them, evidently. tophat-biggrin

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I Just booked Berlin for oct and it was £34 on easy jet to take 26kg case in the hold, each way.

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Yeah, I guess I was thinking of intercontinental flights. I’ve never flown within Europe, just to-from USA.

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bo4_E5

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Take that, metric system!

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Ceratonia siliqua:

Also:

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