Six reasons why I don’t like to check my luggage

In the past week, we’ve posted a lot about the upcoming carry-on fee being introduced on Spirit Airlines. In that discussion, a lot of commenters pointed out that too many people carry too much stuff on their flights.

I am guilty of refusing to check my bags (when possible), but I don’t feel like I’m cheating on the airlines – if anything, I think the airlines have been cheating us for years. Here are my top reasons to refuse checking bags:

Security has made checking bags a major hassle

The airport experience is a pretty lousy one. In the past, you’d walk up to a check-in desk, hand over your ticket to a smiling airline employee, and drop your bags on the scales. That was the last you’d see of them until you landed and retrieved them from the baggage carousel.

Nowadays, the TSA has added a second level of hassle to checked bags – and in most cases, you now show up at an electronic kiosk, and wait for a staff member to call your name and tag your bags. You then need to drag them over to a TSA screening station, and in some cases, this involves waiting in line until the agents have time for you.

It is obvious that airports were not designed to deal with this step in security, but the least they could do is make the wait shorter.

The price of checking a bag

I have elite status on several airlines, and when I’m lucky enough to fly them, I don’t pay for checked baggage. But every now and then I have to fly an airline I don’t frequent, and really don’t like the idea of paying to have a bag loaded in the hold.

If I fly with my wife and daughter and we all check a bag, the price of my trip could easily go up by $300 – even though I’m getting the same lousy service I always did. Am I saving $300 on my ticket price? Nope.

The “carry-on bag fee” annoys me because you are suddenly out of options – you can either pay to check a bag, or pay to carry it on board. Either way, the airline will make money off you.

You can’t trust the airlines (or the baggage handlers, the TSA, fellow passengers or the airport staff)

Once you hand your bag over to the airlines, it passes a large number of people. And sadly, airport staff are not all that reliable.

Bags are regularly emptied of all valuables, and even when they are offloaded, you run the risk of strangers walking off with them in the terminal. Since there are absolutely no safeguards in place, someone can walk into the terminal, walk up to the carousel, and steal any bags they want.

This is exactly how a baggage thief operated in 2009 – he simply walked up to bags, loaded them in his car, and sold the contents at a flea market on weekends. Total haul? Over 600 bags!

US Airports should look at airports in Europe where the luggage area is still a sterile zone – it won’t stop fellow passengers from stealing your bag, but it will keep non-passengers away from them.

Retrieving your bags takes too long

I once waited four hours for the airline to offload my bags. Now, I’m not important enough that every minute of my day matters, but after a long flight, the last thing I want to do is hang around the airport waiting for my bags to come down the belt.

I find the baggage carousel to be one of the most depressing parts of a trip – everyone is in a foul mood, they all just want to go home, and they’ll push you and your family out of the way to reach their bags when they spot them.

The great unknown of where your bag goes

The world of technology is weird – we wait at the airport gate, remotely streaming movies to our iPad, using the airport-wide wireless Internet service, but at the same time, airlines are often unable to reliably get your bags from A to B.

A recent report shows that airlines are losing 3,000 bags every hour, every single day. Even in this day and age, waiting at the baggage carousel is like scratching a lottery ticket – you just never know what will happen next.

And when airlines do lose your bags, you never know if/when you’ll see them again. In addition to this, airlines have very little respect for your belongings. It could be a minor fire that burns everything to ashes, or it could be your priceless guitar – but sooner or later, an airline will damage your belongings.

Why check when you don’t have to?

This one is the most important of all. Airlines allow me to carry one bag and one personal item. When I fly, I’ll carry a laptop bag and a 22′ rolling case. My case fits in the overhead (wheels first) and my laptop bag goes under the seat. With these two bags, I don’t have to check my bags – because the airline rules state I’m allowed to carry them on board.

If people are carrying too much on the planes, then the airlines shouldn’t penalize everyone with paid carry-on rules, they should enforce their own rules. Even with bag sizers and gate agents, people are dragging too much on board. Two bags is the limit? Then enforce that limit. The solution is not to start charging for carry-on baggage, and it isn’t in banning all carry-on bags.

Crumpler Old Banger duffel bag review

The Crumpler “Old Banger” duffel bag is the duffel bag you pick if you need two things – a good looking bag, and a duffel that’ll survive pretty much anything you throw at it.

On the outside, the bag isn’t really all that special – but it is how it is made that really matters with this bag. Crumpler built this bag around the best possible materials – 900D water resistant fabric on the outside, and 150D ripstop on the inside. All zippers are “self healing”, which means they’ll actually realign themselves if something gets stuck.

All the stitching is “bartack stitching” which makes every seam extremely strong. In addition to this, some portions feature triple stitching. The end result is an amazingly sturdy bag – with good looks to match.

The carrying handles are neoprene cushioned, so even when you stuff it full of your travel items, it won’t hurt your hands (too much). On the sides are additional carrying handles – making it easy to pull out of an overhead storage bin. It does lack shoulder straps, but the carrying handles are long enough to be used on your shoulder or even as a backpack.

The outside is decorated with the Crumpler logo – and the bag itself is available in green/orange and blue/green color combinations. Like another of my favorite bags, I love the bright inner color on the Old Banger – perhaps i’m just weird, but I love wacky and bright colors on my bags. In addition to this, the bright inside also makes it easier to find things in the dark.

The Old Banger features 2 additional pockets – one on the outside (with an integrated key ring/strap) and one on the inside. All zippers feature oversized pull tabs. Despite the high quality materials and stitching, Crumpler managed to keep the bag to a mere 1.87 lbs (0.85kg). To test the inner storage space I took a quick unscientific approach – I moved the contents of my fully loaded 22″ roller into the Old Banger – and was able to pack it with ease (and close the zippers). In a day and age where gate agents are on the lookout for heavy looking bags, a duffel is probably going to pass their strict looks easier than an overweight rolling case.

The Crumpler Old Banger comes with a lifetime warranty – but it obviously only covers defects in workmanship, not wear and tear. The lifetime warranty only applies to the original owner of the product.

All in all, a well designed piece of quality luggage – at $105 it is most certainly not a cheap duffel bag, but if you treat your luggage as rough as I do, an investment in something better than a $10 drugstore duffel is a must. You’ll find the Crumpler Old Banger over at their US site, or through their global store finder.

Gadling readers have spoken – Spirit Airlines carry-on bag fee is a bad idea

Several days ago, we asked you for your opinion on the Spirit Airlines carry-on bag fee. As a quick refresher – the airline is planning to charge up to $45 for each carry-on bag that does not fit under the seat in front of you. This is in addition to their checked bag fee.

The whole plan has triggered a lot of responses, from both sides. Some people are (justifiably) annoyed that airlines don’t pay much attention to oversized bags from passengers that take up too much space. Others (correctly) point out that when airlines started to charge for checked bags, passengers had no choice but to carry stuff on board.

Still, nothing makes a point better than some cold hard numbers in the form of a survey – a whopping 5,425 of you took the time to respond (thanks!). The results are pretty clear – 93.2% are against the fee and a mere 6.8% think it is smart.

Of course, 5,425 Gadling readers won’t be enough to convince Spirit Airlines that they making a stupid mistake, but if enough passengers do indeed decide to fly someone else, the message will eventually get through to them.

Spirit Airlines CEO stuffs himself in an overhead bin to justify paid carry-on fees


Spirit Airlines president and CEO, Ben Baldanza took some time out of his busy schedule to try and calm the masses about their upcoming paid carry-on baggage fees.

In his video clip, he claims passengers are annoyed by full overhead bins, and long lines to board the plane. He tells people that Spirit has lowered ticket prices, and lowered checked bag fees. In his logic, by introducing these new carry-on bag fees, the entire experience of flying Spirit Airlines will improve.

Now, lets take a look at his logic – too many people bring too much stuff on the plane. They crowd the overhead bins, and they create long lines for boarding. Why do people bring stuff on the plane? Because Spirit Airlines is one of a long list of airlines that charges for checked luggage ($25 for the first two bags when paid at the airport).

So, instead of removing that fee, and making the experience nicer for everyone, the airline earned itself the ridicule of the airline world by introducing the carry-on bag fee.

And seriously, even though the CEO thought he could be cool by trying to spin this with a funny video, the fact remains that the move to paid carry-on bags will probably cause the airline more than they’ll ever make off their new scheme.
Assuming Mr. Baldanza reads Gadling, I’ll explain why his scheme sucks from the perspective of a traveler:

  • People carry bags on board because they don’t want to pay the checked bag fee – they also want to prevent the airline from losing their bag, setting it on fire or having someone steal the contents.
  • Telling people that their carry-on bag fee is offset by really low price of their ticket doesn’t make the situation any better – people have a built in distrust of anything an airline tells them. A family of three may be forced to pay for three carry-on bags (each way). I suspect Spirit Airlines won’t be able to show that these tickets will be $270 cheaper when the carry-on fee is introduced.
  • People will vote with their wallets – there are still airlines out there that don’t charge for checked bags, and as of right now, Spirit is the only one with a carry-on bag fee.

In a Reuters interview, Ben Baldanza sated the following:

Sprit has reduced fares “by at least as much, or even more than the amount of the carry-on fee”, says Baldanza. “Southwest makes you pay for checked bags even if you don’t check bags, since they have to cover those costs but give you no break if you don’t use the infrastructure. At Spirit, you spend only for what you use and don’t pay for what you don’t use.”

We did an entirely non scientific test to check that. On a Boston Detroit-Tampa ticket, we found the following cheapest prices:

Spirit Airlines: $195.40 total

Southwest Airlines: $220.80

Both flights are priced after the new carry-on fee goes into effect. As you can see – Spirit really is cheaper (by just over $25). This means that a passenger on Southwest Airlines will pay more than on Spirit Airlines.

Assuming of course that the passenger on Spirit is able to pack a weeks worth of luggage into a bag that will fit under their seat.

In reality, nobody is able to do that (unless they ship their bags), so a family of three will end up saving $76.20 on the ticket, but will have to pay a minimum of $90 for three carry-on bags (if they pre-pay online, $135 if paid at the airport).

Goodbye savings.

To me, the fact that the CEO of the airline had to resort to filming a stupid video means the PR backlash from this idea has hit them a little harder than they expected. At least Ben Baldanza is no stranger to bad PR (though he is no Michael O’Leary).

In the end, I’m sure the new measure will take place no matter how much we complain, though I doubt it’ll create the “soaring sales” claimed by Mr. Baldanza, as I really can’t think of a single kind of traveler that saw the new fee and thought “hey, that is really smart – let me start flying this low cost carrier with all the fees”.

What is your opinion? Do you think the idea is smart? Or more importantly – why do you think it is smart (or not)?

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UPDATE: See the results of the poll here. A surprising number of folks actually like the new fee.

Airlines losing 3000 bags – every hour of every day

In 2009, the worlds airlines lost a whopping 25 million pieces of passenger luggage. That comes down to just under 3000 bags every hour of every day, all year long. These shocking statistics were published by SITA – one of the operators of airline and airport computer systems, using data from the World Traver luggage database.

SITA breaks down the reasons behind bags not arriving at their destination:

  • During aircraft transfers – 52%
  • Failed to load – 16%
  • Ticketing error / bag switch / security / other – 13%
  • Airport / customs / weather / space-weight restriction – 6%
  • Loading / offloading error – 7%
  • Arrival station mishandling – 3%
  • Tagging error – 3%

There is some good news though – 96.6% of all bags do manage to reach their owner – eventually. This still leaves over 800,000 bags that end up going unclaimed. Bags that never arrive are often simply abandoned by their owners, or fall victim to theft at the airport. After six months, all unclaimed bags are donated, sold or destroyed.

The real good news is that airlines have managed to lose fewer bags. Compared to 2008, airlines managed to decrease lost bag numbers by 23.8%. Of course, part of this is due to decreasing passenger numbers, but the worldwide decline in air travel was just 2.9%.

Bottom line is that airlines are investing heavily in luggage management, and even though they may never reach a perfect score, the current trend is very positive one – and one that will benefit everyone that checks bags. Of course, as luggage fees have started increasing, it is also refreshing to see that airlines are actually doing something with all that new money.

Don’t forget to follow our tips on keeping your luggage safe at the airport!
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