Out of curiosity, have you ever missed a connection and been stranded at a random airport hotel overnight without your checked luggage? I never travel without my meds, a change of clothing, my toiletries, a couple days of underwear, and something to sleep in. Plus anything i actually plan to use on the plane (headphones, food, water, book) a hardcopy of my travel arrangements, anything fragile (laptop, camera, if I’m bringing those). I’ve done overnight trips with just an under-seat item, but I’m usually stowing a carry-on.
Regional jet, I think.
Yeah. That matches my experience. And i don’t mind those gate-checked bags, because they never go astray. They are right there. (Although i still make sure to have my meds and a change of underwear with me, just in case.)
It’s crazy reading this thread. Airlines have been cramming more and more people on the same size airplane, while charging us more for a tinier seat, charging us for checked bags, charging for snacks, losing our bags, etc. and the general sentiment in this thread is to… blame the other passengers?
Once maybe? On a business trip return home from Texas got waylaid in Chicago, torrential rains flooded the city. The late night shuttle to the hotel was a 45 min trip. Almost not worth it with a 4 am wake-up call. I slept in my underwear and used the hotel amenities to wash. If I had any Rx I’d carry them in my purse.
My luggage did get delayed another time but it was my final destination and they delivered it to me within 24 hours.
Nowadays all my plane travel is for pleasure and I never carry anything really valuable in the luggage.
I agree the whole anxiety over flying these days has most to do with carry-on items, and if/where you can store them during the flight, enhanced by the airlines’ nickle-and-dime luggage policies. If everyone were guaranteed a set amount of space in the bin over their row as par of their ticket cost, as well as stronger enforcement of carry-on size limits, we’d see a lot less of the behaviors everyone has mentioned here.
Regarding the luggage carousel anxiety, I just love when three flights all arrive at the terminal within 10 or 15 minutes and all three flight’s luggage has to be put on the same effing carousel, while four others sit idle. Now you have a few hundred people all crowding around the same area looking for their bags. Perhaps the people who stand right at the edge of the carousel, blocking anyone else from getting their bag, should back the F up a few steps.
When my lovely wife and I travel and need to check bags, we put a packing cube of our own clothes in the other’s suitcase in case one goes missing. We each carry on a small bag/backpack that fits under the seat* with medications, travel documents, wallet/passport, phone/other electronics, and a change of underwear. If I/we carry everything on, it’s a rollerbag that has non-valuable items like clothes, and a bag/backpack as above. My preference is to use one carry-on backpack and be done with it.
*Except that sometimes there’s a big metal housing in the underseat area, which I assume holds electronics related to the viewscreens, and which reduces the space considerably.
That’s very clever. We’re not that organized, but I will consider it. In my experience, lost bags are a lot less common in the past 10 years or so, compared to prior eras.
We’ve also learned that if you are traveling from a warm climate to a cold climate, it is best to have a pair of socks and a light jacket in your carry-on backpack, since if your bag is lost or your flight is delayed, you’re in a cold environment in your sandals and shorts and Hawaiian shirt, sometimes overnight. Looking at you, SEA-TAC.
If you’re trying to catch a connecting flight at your (first) destination airport, your bag will be returned to you on the jetway, regardless of the size of the aircraft.
I’m pretty sure American gate agents say something like “We’re looking for volunteers to check their bag for free to their final destination”. They don’t say that you’ll get it back on the jetway if you have a connection. Maybe it depends on the airline as to whether your bag is checked to the final destination or just to the jetway of this leg of the flight.
That has been my experience with Delta as well. They announce at the gate that they will check your bag for free to your final destination. I’ve volunteered to check my bag a few times, both when flying nonstop and when I had a connecting flight, and they always tagged it to my final destination and I picked it up on the carousel there. The only time I’ve ever had to gate-check a bag, where you pick it up on the jet bridge after the flight, was when flying on a smaller regional jet.
But I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve taken my bag all the way on board, and discovered there was no space for it in the overhead bins. Maybe that’s the scenario people are talking about where they pick up their bag on the jet bridge.
ETA: Ha! @Mighty_Mouse mostly addressed my question right when I was posting it.
I’ve flown about 300 legs predominantly on Southwest and Delta from 1996 to 2000. I was often quite late getting to the gate and thus would find no space in the bins. Most of the time the FA would tell me that I had to give them my carry on.
I would invariably get it back on the jetway. Sometimes I could see them getting a few bags off the plane and zipping them over to the jetway. The cars would have a red tag very different from the tags attached at checkin.
In 2013-2015 I flew another 100 or do segments, mostly on Jet Blue. If I ever had to check my bag, I would get it back at the baggage carousel.
I don’t know what changed between 2000 and 2015, but the process seems to have changed so that they don’t segregate the “red tag” bags from the rest.
None of these instances involved checking bags voluntarily at the gate counter. It happened on the plane or on the jetway.
I am guessing passengers got wise to the “check your bag for free at the gate” deal as airlines started charging people for checked bags. If you bag was iffy, proportion-wise, you could drag it to the gate, and as soon as the offer was announced - et voila, free checked bag! And bonus - get it back right there at the destination gate! So the airlines at least got rid of the bonus.
And now that I think about it that makes sense. If you voluntarily check it at the gate, the agent there has access to a computer and printer and can print a standard luggage tag just like at the check-in counter. Once you’ve boarded the plane, the flight attendant doesn’t have those things. It’s easier for them to just slap a red tag on your bag, and have you retrieve it on the jet bridge, than to make you get back off the plane and have the agent print a tag.
That works on the legacy airlines, but from what I understand the ultra low cost airlines like Spirit, and Ryanair in Europe, are very strict about carry on sizing. If you fly with them and show up at the gate with a bag that’s slightly too large, they will make you check it, and they will charge you for it.
And of course you can’t get a free checked bag that way if you’re carrying something that you can’t take through the security checkpoint, like say a bottle of whiskey. 
But international flights come with a free checked bag anyway, so I was able to bring my whiskey back from Ireland no problem.
Yeah, that’s a good point. I’ve had it done both ways, now that I think about it.
And boy HOW will they charge you for it!
Myself I’ve more often travelled carry-on since back in the lat 90s and almost completely so in the last 20 years, save for some really long duration, or outright relocation, trips. Next such I’ll probably just FedEx/DHL things to my destination and back. In some instances I travelled outbound as carry-on, with multiple bags inside one another, and then returned with one of them checked (if I accumulated too much conference swag or did shopping).
This little event on September 11, 2001, that disrupted how we all fly around the world and not for the better.
Doesn’t seem to directly relate to carry-on bag checking at the gate.
Being able to carry liquids on a plane doesn’t seem to directly relate to 9/11, but it’s what we do.