To be honest it's not the size of bags that's the issue. It's people who expect there to be space for their bag, their handbag, their coat and their purchases from the terminal. Trying to explain that there's physically not enough room for 186 to fit everything up there falls on deaf ears and nobody will put anything under their feet as they want the leg space for their 40 minute domestic hop and winter GVA flights are carnage as they're ALWAYS full and people have bulky ski gear with them. The introduction of coat hooks on seats doesn't seem to have helped neither as people still want them in the overhead.
Look at a major airline's guaranteed bag (if your bag was below X size it was guaranteed to fly in the cabin) which was a complete failure and they have abandoned it as the guaranteed part only worked if you would put it under the seat, which nobody would. It didn't help that the press at the time were pushing stories about how they had reduced the size of allowable baggage in the cabin, which was not true. You get people who will happily sit there watching other people's bags being offloaded whilst their bag is in the overhead when it can easily fit under the seat.
Bring on charging for the over head a la Spirit/Allegiant/WIZZ. There is clearly strong demand for the overheads so charging for them seems the next logical step.
Last edited by mockingjay; 10th Jun 2015 at 15:33.