Recently, I was at O’Hare waiting for a flight to Denver. The gate agent got on the PA and said there wasn’t going to be enough room in the overhead bins for carry-ons once they got up to zone 4–my zone. So I ended up checking my wheelie–no charge. True, I didn’t have it for the layover, but I didn’t have to fork out $25 either.
So what would keep someone who wants to avoid the baggage check fee from taking a medium-sized suitcase to a flight that’s probably going to be full (popular destination, popular time) and avoiding the checked bag fee? Anything?
If you work for an airline, you never saw this post.
Well, it only applies if you have that one wheelie bag, which you have a right to store on the plane, so they can’t force you to check it.
If you bring a bag that is too large and it’s something you’d check, then the offer won’t stand. In many instances, there really is room in the bins with the typical (annoyingly long) am’t of shuffling and squeezing, but they’ve discovered it’s a faster way to pack all the slow-moving dolts onto the flying tuna can (just give us the goddam bags already, you dopes). The airline is in it for turn times: To get rolling ASAP and improve ratings for on-time, etc.
I’ve calmed my temper a lot when travelling, but I’d bash in the skulls of numerous passengers who have to carry a small hut’s worth of goods onto a plane, along with the newspaper, jacket and cup of coffee, if I could get away with it.
My sister got away with this recently. She had been mistakenly told that she was allowed 2 carry-ons plus a purse, which really means just a smaller carry-on. Delta’s carry-on policyis clear that you get one carry-on plus a personal item, and that there is a fee charged if a larger bag is checked at the gate. In my experience, though, I’ve never seen anyone have to pay to gate-check a bag. My sister was allowed to gate-check everything with no charge.
You can’t get to the gate with a luggage larger than the standard 22" rolling suitcase; even if nobody complains, you can’t get it through the X-ray machine. And you are subject to all limitations for carry-on luggage (no liquid containers over 3.4 oz, no knives, etc). The checked luggage fee is basically a fee to bypass all that.
Assuming your luggage is legal as carry on, gate checking doesn’t buy you anything, except a wait at the end for them to bring it out. Since a big reason for not checking luggage is speed, why bother? If you bring on something to big to fit above, and they don’t gate check you, you are going to cause a ruckus, assuming it gets through. And, as mentioned, a big plus for checking luggage is not having to deal with the restrictions.
The last time I flew Delta, it was on fairly small planes. The overhead bins were small and shallow, and wouldn’t fit most of the carry-ons that were max-regulation size. They gate checked everything, right at the door of the plane, so they just ran all the baggage down the stairs and onto the plane. When we debarked at our destination, they did the bag-run in reverse and we just picked up our bags as we stepped out of the plane and into the gangway.
I thought it was pretty great. I had my standard “personal” bag with all my entertainment, food and change of undies, and didn’t have to worry about overhead crap for myself or the other passengers. It was quick, quick, quick.
Reasonably frequent flyer (120 flights/yr or so) here.
You can almost always get a carry-on size bag checked planeside for free, and always for free if they are out of overhead bin space. If the bag is larger than carry-on size, the airline has the option of charging you for sending it via baggage check, and I have seen them do this. Oddly enough, this is usually met with a quiet cheer from frequent flyers, who get annoyed when someone tries to bring on a huge bag that obviously is not going to fit. It really disrupts the speed of boarding. The greeting attendant on the plane is supposed to keep an eye out for that, as is the gate agent.
Smaller regional jets use a tagging system that leaves bags on the jetway before boarding. The size of those bags is less regulated and an oversize bag would get through free if it made it past the gate agent.
A bag has to get through security in order to get to the plane in the first place. Sometimes the security gates will size the bags in a sizer to the 22" spec; sometimes by eye and sometimes not at all. This depends on the airport, the airline and, apparently, TSA’s whims. Yesterday in Atlanta I saw a kid–obviously a naive flyer–get two 26" full suitcases through the security checkpoint. He made some kind of plea to the TSA guy. It was a nearly empty line and they just let his bags go through (they did fit through the scanners, which do take oversize bags). Other times I’ve been stopped because I stuffed a jacket into a carry on and the TSA checker thought the bag was too fat to fit in an airplane overhead. He was also too dumb to understand I was on a regional jet so it would have to be gate-checked anyway. I stopped arguing (pointless with TSA) and just took the jacket out and put it in a bin. In a hundred times through that same security line, that’s only happened once, and was obviously the whim of that particular nasty man. On average TSA assumes bag size is the gate agent’s problem.
I pretty much only fly first as a frequent flyer, and sometimes the premium lines are more lenient than the standard lines. But in general, I think I have it mostly right for the typical flyer.
