Hand luggage allowances

[Big Harvey]

I like to travel light wherever possible. One of the biggest advantages of this is that I can usually travel with just hand luggage. This saves me a lot of time waiting around at baggage carousels with the nagging doubt at the back of my mind as to whether my stuff's actually going to turn up.

Recently however, I have discovered that some airlines don't appear to like this approach to travelling, and I'm curious as to why they seem to want to make life difficult for people like me.

Three months ago I flew from Gatwick cattle class with Qatar Airways to Colombo via Doha. As usual I just brought my small suitcase on wheels that falls within what seems to be the standard guideline regarding dimension. On a previous trip with another airline, I had been advised that airport security had placed a 10kg limit on hand luggage, so I'd ensured that my case also complied with this rule.

Unfortunately, when I arrived at check-in, I was told that Qatar Airways have a strict 8kg limit on hand luggage, and that my bag was too heavy (at about 9.4 kg). I would have to either check it in as hold luggage, or take some stuff out. It was Winter, and I was wearing a fleece, so I took out a couple of the heavier items (camera, books, etc.) and stuffed them into the pockets of my fleece. This was sufficient to comply with their policy, and needless to say, as soon as my bag had been tagged and I was away from the check-in area, everything went back in my case!

When I got home, I checked a couple of airline websites, and each one seems to have a different policy on hand luggage. What I don't understand is this: If Easyjet (for example) can let you take any reasonable weight of hand luggage aboard with you as long as it falls within the maximum dimensions, then why do Qatar Airways enforce a strict 8 kg limit, and Royal Brunei (with who I'm going to be flying to Auckland later this month) have a miserly 7kg limit in cattle class?

I recognise that in theory you could carry ridiculous amounts of weight in one of those cases. I wouldn't want a big solid lump of metal even close to the maximum dimensions sitting above my head in an overhead locker, to use an extreme example, so for safety reasons I'm not against having some kind of limit. What I do find strange though is the inconsistency, and the fact that surely if more baggage has to be checked in, it must be significanly more expensive for the airline to handle.

Can anyone throw any light on this?

[PAXboy]

The answer = Money!!

Each carrier has different priorities to try and earn as much money as possible and they will alter the components to make their 'product' (we don't call it service any more :rolleyes:) and will charge accordingly.

In general (and beware of generalisations) the LCOs will promote MORE hand luggage on board, because that speeds up turnarounds by having less to go in and out of the a/c belly by third parties, which is manually handled piece by piece. Some LCOs charge for bags in the hold to either, save themselves work or, to make themselves money = win:win.

The majors however, have so many more pax to get on to their 777/747/340s that they do it the other way around. They have (largely) automated systems for doing this and want less baggage in the cabin as it slows down loading. This basic rule is for economy seated pax, C + F different.

Some carriers are trying the middle way. That is, try and make you check your bags in AND charge you for them, FlyBe is notable for this.

What a carrier will allow on their a/c will vary even by country and don't get me started about 'security' limitations on luggage ...

[groundhand]

PAXboy

A good answer.

[Big Harvey]

Thanks for your answer PAXboy, which made a lot of sense. However I still don't understand why an airline would think it would take longer to load 7 kg into an overhead locker than it would to load 10 kg or even 12 kg carried in the same sized bag into the same locker.

Perhaps their policy of only allowing a small amount of hand luggage isn't actually targeted at travellers like me (who try not to check any baggage in at all), but at those people who bring the entire contents of their house with them and use the hand luggage allowance to the max in order to take as much luggage with them as they possibly can without having to pay excess. This type of traveller is probably present in much greater numbers on long-haul flights than people like me, and I suppose the net effect of a smaller hand luggage allowance is that it probably does reduce the overall amount of weight carried, and therefore saves a bit of fuel.

Unfortunately for them, in my case, it'll probably increase the amout of stuff I'll be taking to New Zealand. 7 kg is realistically not enough for 3 weeks in NZ for a big lad like me, since it sometimes gets cold weather, so if I've got to check my bag in anyway, I might as well pack a few extra items.

[PAXboy]

BH if you do pack in a few extra items - they won't mind! That's because you will then be within the broad range of luggage weights on which they base their calculations. If you have too much hand luggage - then you are outside their calculations!

It is certainly true that those who bring too much into the cabin are a real problem for everyone. Also, consider that the overhead lockers have a maximum weight that they are certified to carry. Since they know that some folks will be slightly over their weight (but be let through) and that others will be buying heavy duty free, they need to keep the official limit down.

I can tell you that the topic of hand luggage is one of the most regular to appear in this forum!

[owaoot]

As an ex check-in agent I've had many arguments over hand luggage.

Generally the rules are there for safety (no-one wants a heavy case whacking them on the head during turbulence) or lack of overhead locker space.

On a large aircraft the difference between hand luggage weights are negligible in terms of fuel economy.

[Rush2112]

This is one of my pet peeves: why don't airlines and ground staff apply some consistency, and apply the rules. Friday out of CDG on SQ, we had got seated and stowed our bags up top ok. A lady got on and was in the row in front of us: she had a large trolley bag, a medium-sized rucksack, a handbag, a thick fleecy jacket, a sweater, two large carrier bags from the duty free (one a Lancel bag, the other I couldn't quite see) and a plastic bag with a couple of bottles of alc of some sort in it. She spent ten mins filling all the surrounding lockers with this stuff, then turned to me and asked if I could lift the trolley bag for her as it was too heavy.

I sat there astonished for a second and then retorted that if she couldn't lift it herself she should not have brought it on the plane.

An Aussie girl sitting opposite fair sprang out of her seat and manhandled it into the locker, bless her. Hope the physio bill isn't too steep love.

[bealine]

..........why don't airlines and ground staff apply some consistency

Easy - Because we get so much conflicting direction from our airline management!

Because we get into confrontational situations with you, the passenger, every single day of our working lives!

Because Ground Rage incidents are ever-increasing and we don't wish to end our shift in Casualty!

How many more reasons would you like?

[Final 3 Greens]

Yep, its all the fault of those dang passengers again.

How many times do we read it on this forum, so it must be true.

[bealine]

Yep, its all the fault of those dang passengers again.

Sorry, FTG, it sure seems that way! Of course it isn't! Sometimes it seems as though all I face is abuse and threats from passengers, until you put it into perspective - I deal with about a thousand passengers a day. Of those, about 950 present no problems at all, about 30 will present me with a challenge (lost bags, missed connection, incorrect passport/visa etc) , 18 will be a real pleasure to deal with and just two will be absolute a**holes! I can usually deal with the a-holes myself but once in about six months, I will have to get the police to intervene.

Unfortunately, if you ask me how my day was, I would probably think of the two! (That is human nature!)

The fault lies between:


1. Passengers who can't, or won't, heed their airline's Terms and Conditions. (The OP knew he had a 8 kg hand baggage limit - why, then, was he surprised when a 9.4 kg bag was taken away from him?)

2. Airlines who keep moving the goalposts due to commercial pressure.

3. Less tolerance and willingness to accept rules and regs by society in general.

4. Ever increasing incidents involving violence and abuse from passengers directed at airline staff.

[Big Harvey]

Bealine wrote:

"The OP knew he had a 8 kg hand baggage limit - why, then, was he surprised when a 9.4 kg bag was taken away from him."

Bealine, if I had known that some airlines had a miserly 8kg (or less) allowance for hand luggage, I would have packed accordingly. It never even occurred to me that the policy on hand luggage could vary so greatly from airline to airline. The only time I'd ever heard of a weight limit on hand luggage was the previous flight I'd taken, when 10 kg was mentioned, and my understanding was that this was to do with airport security, rather than the airline.

I had flown literally dozens of times with that case, and can't even recall ever having had it weighed before. It was within the legal dimensions for the single item of hand luggage allowed on flights from the UK, and I'd assumed that was all that mattered.

BTW, my bag wasn't "taken away from" me. If you re-read my original post (as perhaps you will argue I should have read the airline's rules regarding hand luggage but as you can see from your own mistake it's easy to miss things), you will see that I removed a few heavier items, stuffed them in my pockets, and put them back in my case once it had been tagged.

I wasn't complaining about this per se (although it was a completely ridiculous thing to have to do, and I wasn't exactly delighted about it at the time), I was merely asking out of curiosity why the policy of different airlines towards hand luggage varies so greatly, and why some airlines seem to prefer travellers like me who travel with hand luggage only, whereas others seem to want to make it impossible for people to do this.

PAXboy has largely answered these questions.