Two Seats - 1 Baggage Allowance ??

[peuce]

I am moving overseas and have a fair bit of baggage. I came up with the brainwave of buying 2 seats for myself and therefore ... having extra room and having double the baggage allowance.

Wrong, at least with Singapore Airlines, if you buy 2 seats, you still only get 1 baggage allowance ... what the?:*

[PAXboy]

Freight forwarding.

Book the cases through your carrier, usually delivered to airport 24 hrs in advance to get cheaper rate.
Specialist freight companies who do this for a living. They have rates per kilo that are waaaay lower than regular baggage.

[raffele]

Wrong, at least with Singapore Airlines, if you buy 2 seats, you still only get 1 baggage allowance ... what the?

Perhaps because the booking is only for one passenger, thus one pax's baggage allowance?

[Katamarino]

Logically, you should get 2 baggage allowances, plus the standard bodyweight again in extra baggage allowance as your second seat won't have a person in it!

Of course, an airline would never do things the 'fair' way :ugh:

[Malone]

I hope that you have taken it further and demanded a refund for one of the tickets.

[Carrier]

One of the reasons for paying by credit card is that you have the right to refuse to pay if the good or service that you have paid for is not provided. If you paid by credit card you should immediately check into the procedure for this.

Common sense indicates that you should advise the card company of the problem and that you will not be paying for the service that has not been provided.

Depending on the laws you might also advise the police fraud department, government and private sector consumer agencies, regulatory bodies, and those sections of the media who assist ripped off consumers.

[Avman]

The question is: is the baggage allowance provided on a SEAT basis or PASSENGER basis? I think the latter. Therefore, technically SIA is correct. Sorry. But, as mentioned above, plenty of cheaper solutions are available.

[Remers]

Unfortunately you bought two tickets for two passengers. Only one passenger presented themselves for checkin therefore only one bag allowance. If you want extra baggage then tell the airline before and most will give you a cheaper price than at the airport.

[ExXB]

Because the airline thought of your brainwave before you did! Airlines don't want you to undercut their standard excess baggage charges this way. I couldn't find a SQ charge on their web-site but I note that BA charges for their long haul flights GBP32 for an extra bag up to 23kg and GBP72 for the second (to 9th) extra bag.

Surely you can't buy a second seat long haul ticket for GBP32!

[Fernanjet]

Even if you did find a longhaul ticket for £32gbp, the airline will not let you check in one passenger for 2 seats....

Your'e brainwave was more of a brain tumour affecting your thought process i think......

[Checkboard]

You'll probably find two economy seats = one business seat = extra service as well as extra baggage and extra room.

... although I admit business class seats can be four or five times an economy seat sometimes. :hmm:

[peuce]

Thank you all for your replies.
Just to clarify ... I hadn't bought the tickets yet ... only researching.

I think SIA excess baggage charge would be about US$22 per kg (in my case).
My choice, I thought, was to pay about US$450 in excess baggage or buy an extra ticket(including its luggage allowance) for about US$480. You can see how having that extra seat room would have been the more attractive proposition.

There must be a provision for buying 2 seats in the one name ... what about obese passengers, who are forced to?

However, I think AVMAN has hit the nail on the head ... baggage must be per person, not seat. Is that fair? I don't think so ... but that's life.

I have since bought a ticket on a LCC carrier, including the excess baggage charge, including an exit row charge ... for lower than the SIA single seat charge... and I think I've got a better than 70/30 chance of getting to my destination.

[Carrier]

Airlines have lost all notion of customer service and common sense! As I am a pilot who lives and works in different continents from time to time Mrs C and I face the same problem. Pilots on six weeks or two months rotations also face it. When we move we are carrying more than a person on a ten day package vacation. For decades our luggage fitted within the two piece North American allowance. Now we have no end of hassles from airlines that seem to have a death wish. What cheek to complain about less traffic when they are going out of their way to alienate customers. Mrs C and I travel by car, coach, train or ferry when possible. We now use airlines only for trans-oceanic travel.

"Quote: "It was an IATA standard for 2 bags on flights to/from the US. I think most if not all have reduced the allowance at least for economy to 1 bag. This include AA, CO, DL, BA, AF, KL, VS etc."

Yes, from about seven years ago up to thirty years ago the standard checked baggage allowance for economy class to and from North America was two pieces, each to not exceed 70 lbs. 70 lbs was the maximum weight the baggage handlers were allowed to lift. (The same maximum weight applied to mail bags in the UK in the 1960s.) Carry-on bags were in addition to this. This allowance applied to all connecting flights elsewhere that were part of the same journey; e.g. on a ticket from Durban, South Africa to Thunder Bay, Canada SAA had to provide this allowance for the flight from Durban to Johannesburg, BA or SAA then had to provide it between Johannesburg and London, BA or Air Canada had to provide it between London and Toronto and Air Canada or Canadian Airlines had to provide it from Toronto to Thunder Bay.

Mrs. C and I regularly flew between South Africa and Canada, the UK and Canada and Canada and elsewhere in Africa and always received this allowance for many years. It worked fine for some decades so there is no valid reason why it should not still apply. The answer is to not just reintroduce it to and from North America but to EXTEND IT TO ALL OTHER INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS.

PS: Remember that this was a maximum allowance. Many passengers, including us, often were well short of the maximum limit.

http://www.pprune.org/passengers-slf-self-loading-freight/402027-ba-luggage-allowance-usa-flights.html

You will note from ExXB's post after mine in the above thread that there is no weight problem as "cube" or volume is more important for baggage.

[ExXB]

You will note from ExXB's post after mine in the above thread that there is no weight problem as "cube" or volume is more important for baggage.I didn't actually say that. I said that in the '60s the US CAB came to that conclusion - but remember there were no wide-bodies in those days. Even if their conclusion was right then, I don't think it is now with the aircraft models operating today.

In the good old days governments were content with the airlines making 'agreements' amongst themselves, through IATA, on what the industry standards should be. In those days there was much more interlining and you needed these standards for the passenger to move 'seamlessly' from one airline to the next.

Today, governments want airlines to compete which means airlines set their own rules for these things (and to a limited extent - where authorised - with their alliance partners). Compete means prices go up as well as down as/when the airlines sees an opportunity to enhance their revenues. That is the reality and we poor consumers have to live with it.

While I relate to your comment about customer service - this really isn't what brings the customers back. It's price, price and price, in that order, that drives today's consumers.