Woomerasan
As explained to your handmaiden (for God's sake don't let her know I said that!! She will moider me!) if not totally required immediately on arrival (which it was) the excess can be forwarded on a subload basis as International Unaccompanied Baggage at a fraction of the cost.
Cheapest way to lose excess to a degree on the Rat is to join Club Rat. This gives you an extra 10 kilos per passenger on core services at least.
If anyone wants to join, give me a yell. We have a corporate cell - October turnaround - that saves you about $100 over casual joining fee. We are also agents for Jetta Excess Baggage and they are cheap as chips. Works well too.
The base formula for International excess is 1% of the first class fare per kilogram, but you cannot even count on this. The mood of the dude rule applies, as do airline set rates which are generally cheaper than standard by up to 50%.
Excess is a "gotta have" as I have seen F28-4000 checkins ex DPO with over 180 full sized bags on a 72 seater, and also having to find space for 2 tonnes of live crays.This was always a nightmare at Christmas time.
As for cabin baggage, the airlines need to nail this one down. The huge hand luggage snuck on doesn't make its way to the load sheet and pushed the parameters of the average weight.
Personally I carry my own excess baggage, even if a fair bit has been offloaded of late. Suffice to say someone has to make up for the 60 kg weaklings and maintain the overall average.
Best all
EWL