The European Union is planning to ban airlines from charging extra to take both a “personal item” — the small under-seat bag — and a one small carry-on wheelie bag.
The wheelie bag would be stowed in the overhead locker and would need to weigh less than 7kg and have maximum dimensions of 100cm (sum of length, width and height).
Members of the European parliament’s transport and tourism committee voted to ban airlines charging extra for two bags, in an effort to simplify booking processes, remove so-called drip pricing and save consumers money.
All tickets will now go up in price.
Complete fucking idiocy.
But this is what the elected representatives of 450 million people get up to. Trying to micromanage life – and being cuntish idiots with it to boot.
Jacquerie. It’s the only answer.
As long as people think this is just stupidity and that they’re twats – as opposed to cunts, a very different beast – they win.
They want ticket prices to go up, FFS.
They don’t want plebs flying anywhere – they have said as much, and their every public policy is in the same fucking direction – but they can’t come out and legislate against it in a oner because even the plans would notice. So they’re weening you off it.
Even the *plebs* would notice. Fucking autocorrect/lack of an edit function etc etc
Yet another case of people being forced to pay for something they don’t need or want.
It’s a good job-for them-that they did away with having to be elected and invented a brand new democracy…
If you have some free time go to the YouTube channel of Wendover Productions who investigate among other things the economics of airlines.
https://www.youtube.com/@Wendoverproductions
Airlines make little to no profit out of carrying people and freight around. They do however have large cash flows and can make money out of making the money work for them. It’s a similar situation to short term insurers who as Tim Worstall has shown us, make all their profits out of the float.
How Airlines Quietly Became Banks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggUduBmvQ_4
John,
But actually, lots of people complain about baggage costs. “We didn’t used to have to pay separate for baggage in the 80s”. Well, yeah, you cretin, when it was £200 return to Vienna (£500 today).
They’ll love this, but then, bitch when Easyjet raise the prices.
I’m going to consider doing the advance surface shipping for an Italy trip. Pack up a bag a week before, and collect on arrival. It’s not just cheaper, but no waiting around baggage reclaim or getting luggage on and off buses.
As WB says, this is all about airlines advertising the basic cost and then charging for add ons once you start booking. Complaining tourists and whinging journalists never do day trips so aren’t interested in the lowest price possible whereas business users can legitimately be fleeced.
Part of the “cui malo?” crowd then Tim?
I think certain airlines have precipitated this with dodgy ground staff behaviour around hand luggage. The media is awash with stories of people whose hand luggage meets the criteria when booking only to find dishonest ground staff misapplying fines at the airport (allegedly for bonus reasons). The classic is luggage that clearly fits within the measuring bin arbitrarily being deemed too large by ground staff telling bare faced lies, or luggage that is perfectly fine on the way out suddenly becoming too large on the return leg. If there was a way of stopping these scams at the airport higher authorities wouldn’t have an excuse to step in.
Facepalm. As others have noted, plenty of folk appreciated that cheaper option. It also helps manage that limited space. Remove the incentive to not take an overhead bag, and what do they imagine will happen?
I noticed the 7kg limit in there…. Ryanair currently sell a 10kg (also over the 100cm stated)… I wonder whether that will be their escape clause… inclusive 7kg 100cm only but 10kg 115cm for the fee, followed by weighing everything at the gate. Misery all round.
Now if they had simply said must list the price including optional bag for anyplace comparing fares, but free to offer the discounted no bag at booking, might actually have been onto something
How can this work? There is overhead locker space for about half the passengers to store a wheelie bag there. The rest must go into the hold.
I predict this’ll be a priority boarding thing again – the people with PB get on 1st & can stow there bags in the cabin, everyone else must dump their bags at the gate or aircraft steps and claim them at the normal baggage claim. (SAS did this to me once when they said the overhead lockers were full after X passengers had boarded.)
So you still end up paying for bags in the cabin, but boarding is slower with lots of arguements at the gate.
P.S. Agree with MJW – airlines can by right sh!ts at the gate sometimes.
Raffles,
It can’t.
The fundamental problem is people going on holiday and maximising cabin luggage. So instead of 2 suitcases a couple will get one and fill cabin bags. Then they want an actual in flight bag.
The cabin bag should be what you need in-flight. Medicines, snacks, things to stop you getting bored. I would do a messenger bag/big lady handbag size.
Doesn’t everyone just wear a jacket with lots of pockets? And if that’s not enough, a coat on top with yet more pockets?
Or do the airlines charge for coats now too?
“The fundamental problem is people going on holiday and maximising cabin luggage. So instead of 2 suitcases a couple will get one and fill cabin bags.”
Ner. This is a woman-specific problem. Handbag. Tote-type bag. Then something for the overhead rack. Plus, obvs, whatever has been checked in at baggage control.
Granted, you should be getting into the cabin with whatever essentials you need for the flight, but that’s not what the girlies does.
Like BinW, I have a jacket with lots of pockets, and a laptop bag, and that’s it.
No one ever ran for office without thinking that the world would be such a perfect place if only they could micromanage everything.
@ TD
My Dad ran for the local council because our dentist asked while he was sitting in the chair, not expecting the world would be perfect but confident that local services would be improved if he got involved (they were).
Great, the “wheelie bag” dimensions they have specified are actually a tiny bit smaller than the size currently allowed for the underseat bag on EasyJet flights. No doubt they will compensate by making the “smaller” underseat bag very very small; perhaps the size of a ladies purse i.e. something that can be put in your pocket.
Perhaps the airlines should weigh the passenger with their luggage – this would be fair, as the fuel cost relates directly to this weight. Why should I, 65kg, pay the same as that person over there, 115kg?
@ Ed P
+1 for the idea of charging by weight. Problem would be that you can only reliably check when the person is at the airport. The number of 125 kg+ people claiming to be 75 kg to get the cheaper fare would fuck it all up.
A couple or three extra tons on a 80 ton airliner might have the obvious effect on climb rate but it doesn’t count for all that much in the cruise where the induced drag component will be 10% of total drag, the the total directly relates to fuel consumption, not just the induced bit. The induced drag will however vary as the square of the weight and the power requirement with the cube. IF I remember this stuff correctly. You don’t want to make me go to the other room for a book, do you?
@Agent Smith
Checking at the airport is fine. That is after all where they weigh your excess baggage and charge you extra if you are bringing excess weight.
john77: one does not do anything as vulger as *run* for election in this country, chasing after elected office, one *stands* for election.
@ jgh
I stand corrected: too many years of reading tabloid newspapers and the BBC website has downgraded my speech.
Utter fucking plonkers! Still, in terms of how much inconvenience and expense it is to the rest of us it is small beer compared to the EU GDPR cookies legislation.
Whoever came up with that cookies thing must be absolutely delighted – every second of every day all over the world humans waste their time accepting cookies and anyone who operates a website has been put to the expense of implementing it. If one tenth of the world wastes 3 seconds per day accepting cookies – do the maths …
Perhaps the airlines should weigh the passenger with their luggage
They used to do this of course – in the olden days like…
rhoda @ 7.47, I saw a documentary some years ago regarding the Concorde crash in 2000. One issue noted (apart from the dodgy wheel repair by the frogs and them not sweeping the runway before take off as was usual at Heathrow), was that half a tonne of extra baggage had been loaded which took it over it’s permitted weight limit.
Also reminded of the planet in The Hitchhikers Guide that weighed people on their arrival and then on leaving, and if I remember correctly, loping off bits of you if you weighed more………
The correct way for any govt to solve the problem of drip pricing (a.k.a. “dark patterns”) is to force airlines to show the headline price with baggage included, then let you remove the baggage later in the booking process.
Or more broadly, the headline price displayed has to include the most commonly-chosen options. This could easily apply to other fields like spurious booking fees on TicketMaster & co, or non-optional cleaning fees on AirBnB.
Come on people, one of the few remaining pleasures of budget flights is watching a 5′ tall 100lb Chinese lady trying to put a 10kg case in the overhead bin.
Raffles, there isn’t a need to put any bags in the hold. The wheelie bags have odd specified dimensions so that they can fit underneath the seat in front of you. They’re actually rather wasteful dimensions for overhead, especially on anything smaller than a 319. It’s technically possible for every passenger (except emergency row and bulkhead) on a fully booked flight to take 1 wheelie in the cabin without using any overhead space at all. Almost no passenger seems to know this, and I’ve never seen a flight attendant suggest it to a bemused mouthbreather.
If you board late, after everyone else has filled up the overhead, then tough luck, stick it under your seat and stick your feet on it. Livewithable for an hour or two. Yes, done it myself more than once.
And yes, I don’t understand how any of this carry-on charging is of any benefit to airlines like Ryanair, who need to have bag police at every gate to enforce it, presumably charge (on the spot) people with too much, during boarding, ensuing arguments, cards being declined etc.