United reduces bags... others to follow?

[dagibbs]

So, United just announced that they were reducing your checked luggage amount from 2 bags to 1 for the basic cheap seat tickets. I wonder if the other North American airlines are going to do the same soon?

Flying gets less and less pleasant... more security, so it is harder to carry one as much, so we needed to check more stuff... and, now (well, soon), we can't check as much stuff, either.

(At least I'm 1337 enough that United will still let me bring stuff.)

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/niall_/]

...I had written a lot until I noticed you said "checked luggage", not "carry-on". After my experience on the full United Airbus 320 flight on my way back, I was prefectly willing to believe they were limiting carry-on to one piece, because most people had 2, and yet there's only space for 1.5 - counting the underseat space... for today's hard-case rolling luggage anyway, not the older soft squishable luggage like I have, for which those bins were designed...

(I'll now very carefully check which actual airline I'm flying on, and avoid United if at all possible. Though at least some of their flight attendants were quite polite and attentive, such as announcing the approximate ETA after delay before leaving the gate, and giving an extra two minutes for people to use their cellphones to give that info before they have to be shut off. That was a very nice touch.)

[elizilla]

Yeah, anything that makes people try to carry on even more crap, is a bad thing. I'm always irritated by how long it takes to load and unload planes, as people play tetris with the overhead bins. Just check some of that stuff already, sheesh.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hate the way people bring on monster carry-ons and I don't have room for my (quite reasonably sized) backpack in the overhead bins. I hate losing my oh-so-valuable foot room to their luggage.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

For many flights on smaller planes (like the flights to Montreal, TO, Detroit, etc from Ottawa) also restrict the amount of carry-on, often to one piece. Sometimes it is "one piece, plus one personal item such as a purse or laptop" and sometimes (lately) it is "one piece".

[http://users.livejournal.com/niall_/]

Well, there's a valid reason for that - those turboprops tend to not have any real overhead space, and seats are noticeably narrower, so there's often barely space for a small personal belonging. Since those flights are rarely more than "1.5 hours" (meaning an hour inthe air and some time taxiing), I can deal with bent knees. But I think you have even longer legs than I have, and mine are at the limit of comfortability, so yeah, I understand your pain about valuable foot room.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I was mostly thinking of the baby jets rather than the turbo-props, but same idea. And, I understand why the "only one carry-on", it makes sense as they have less cargo space. But, if they're also restricting your checked luggage, it starts to get... difficult.

Though, with the one carry-on planes, you can usually gate check the extra stuff, so that is an alternative.

[i-and-t.livejournal.com]

Well,

Since I have 2 pieces with me right now, they had better not try and enforce it on my way home...

Although, you can just imagine them doing it. *sigh*.

T.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

It is for travel booked on or after Feb 4th, for travel on or after May 5th. You should be ok.