Things that airline staff want you to know...

[FlyMayBe]

If you bring the wrong passport to the airport, you will not be allowed to fly on an international flight.

No, the captain will not hold the aircraft for you while you wait for your relative to bring the correct passport in a taxi.

Lost your passport in the airport? Nope. You still can't fly - unless it is a domestic flight and you have reliable photo ID.

Linnet in my experience, they will fly the bag without you, if you flew on a plane. They wont fly the bag if you miss the plane, and so can control what plane your bag will be on without you. So, your mess up, no bag. Their ness up, they will get it to you.

IME, boarding crew screen passangers waiting for larger hand luggage and try to convince people to put it in the hold. Or put in place stricter size or weight restrictions that previously advised.
I don't think they want to be sending last minute luggage to the hold.

Obvs I can only speak for my own airline. We do pre -screen luggage in the boarding queue. Pax with outsize 'hand' luggage will be charged for a full-size hold case, and it is more expensive at the gate. This is to discourage 'chancers' who hope that we won't notice their oversize bag.
Not all airlines weigh cabin baggage. Our luggage gauge is the same as the landslide one and bags must fit inside fully - including the wheels.
Last-minute hold luggage causes no problems for the baggage handlers as they are at the flight loading bags anyway. The most time-consuming part is tagging the bags by hand at the gate.

The shopping-bag allowance is imposed on airlines by the airport.

Not everyone is a jet setter businesswoman or can afford a foreign holiday every year. I have only encountered the "liquids" rule once since it came in, and yes, it took me by surprise.

With different airlines I've had requests for perfectly legit hand luggage to go to the hold for free when the flight is full.

Slightly off the point I was on a long distance train alone with DS when he was 2 and when the ticket collector came round he (DS, not the TC!) was asleep,in my arms so he said he wouldn’t bother checking my ticket as it would disturb DS. I was so,touched! waking DS would have been a nightmare as we’d just come off a 3 hour flight.

Strictly speaking this is true, as you can't be refused entry to your home nation

Yes, but that would require going to a consulate/embassy and getting a special document to return home, although different countries may have different rules.

@Linnet - Airlines do fly unaccompanied 'Rush' bags, subject to extra security screening for obvious reasons. But if you check a bag in then stay in the bar board late , your bag has to be located by the baggage crew (who may have to search through hundreds of bags for your baggage) in preparation for last-minute offloading.

@Lweji

Please see my previous post...

5. Aircraft have limited overhead locker space. Boarding crew count trolley bags as they go through the gate. Once the count limit is reached, trolley bags need to go in the hold. Please don't shout at the boarding agent as it is not their fault. If getting on with your trolley bag is imperative, then make sure you are at the front of the gate queue prior to boarding.

*10. Sometimes security staff and Border Force can sound a little brusque. Please remember that they are trying their best to keep everyone safe in the air and at the airport

I do understand though about airport security what with children who are pilots, engineers and cabin crew. I’m all for it. The more of it the merrier. But the reality is that the brusque security and immigration staff are bullies in a uniform.

Last year my dd was flying to Europe with a group on Ryanair. I’ve never flown Ryanair so we were checking the rules on luggage. The group were not paying for luggage to go in the hold it was hand luggage only, fair enough. The stress we went through trying to make sure the liquids didn’t add up to more than a litre, and all fitted in one bag, which it didn’t so we split it into two bags but it still wasn’t more than the litre. When she got to the airport security they wouldn’t let her take the liquids in 2 bags only 1. She had to put some in one of her friends clear bags and then realised once at her destination that security had removed her face wipes so she didn’t have them.
The annoying part of all this was if the bags had been going in the hold it wouldn’t have mattered how much she had, and she didn’t have a lot it just didn’t all fit in the ridiculously small plastic bag she had a little bit of make up sun cream bug spray shampoo/shower gel etc but because it was hand luggage only we had to be careful. They get to the gate to board the plane and they took all the suitcases off them and put them in the hold!!! So why make all the fuss about liquids when they were going to take the luggage off them and put it in the hold anyway! It shouldn’t have made a difference. I believe that Ryanair have changed their rules again since then.
Dd is flying to Europe again this summer with a different group but this time with British airways, i don’t know yet if they are doing hand luggage only or not so I may have to go through all this again in a few weeks time.

Flymaybe, we figured that it must have been ok to fly the bags out as we had already gone. I totally understand about having to take the bags off etc and what a pain that must be.

You don't have to actually fly to know about the liquids rule. It's been on the news, quite a lot. People talk about it, there are numerous posts about it on here.

All the airlines have different rules re bags etc and they sometimes change, so if you haven't flown on that airline within the last couple of months, it's a good idea to spend a few minutes reading the information on their website, so there's no nasty surprises when you get to the airport.

So why make all the fuss about liquids when they were going to take the luggage off them and put it in the hold anyway

They don't know that's going to happen - most bags go in the cabin.

Or people can take the liquids out of the bag and put them in their pockets, or after security, they can collect up all the little bottles and combine them together in a bigger bottle. You can buy a handy sized one in the shop after security. You know, the big glass ones full of flammable liquids .

Airport security often doesn't make sense. Trained killers will be able to cause mayhem with all manner of household objects that are not banned from flights anyway, while the vast majority of us have no desire to do anything of the sort, and wouldn't know how to anyway.

But rules are rules, and if you want to fly, you need to follow them.

Please see my previous post...

And please see my previous post about it. IME people who arrive early (me) ARE asked for their hand luggage to go in the hold with no charge even before boarding starts!!!
And then I see late people getting in the plane with much larger suitcases than mine.

I think they just ask everyone until enough people agree. Try saying no, you want to keep your bag with you and they may let you and move on to someone else.

Over the next couple of days I'm taking 4 flights on 3 different airlines and some bright spark has booked all the tickets on one booking with different luggage rules for each sector so I've had to work out which is the smallest and manage with that so I don't come unstuck.

I won't be giving up my trolley case because experience shows that even if I make the scarily short connections (1 hour and 1.5 hours in massive hub airports), my bag won't and the one time I did give up my bag, it didn't make it and it arrived in my destination at the same time as I got back to the airport to come home.

So I'll be breaking the habit of a lifetime and queueing up to get on first instead of sitting reading my book until the queue has disappeared beyond the gate, but is still in existence round the corner when you get up to get on.

The rules that Ryanair had at the time said that if you hadn’t paid for your luggage to go in the cabin it would be taken off you at the gate and put in the hold free of charge. The group knew that this was going to happen as they hadn’t paid the extra to have the bags in the cabin with them. But we still had to have a bag which was cabin sized only and limit the liquids even though it was always going to go into the hold. It made absolutely no sense.
Ryanair have now changed the rules again since then so it’s different now.

@Lewji Of course we should all fly with the right documentation, which is why I said the airline was taking a risk to let someone on board without it. But the reality is (certainly used to be until relatively recently at least) that faced with a passenger coming back to their home county with some sort of ID from a shorthaul flight and a low risk profile, both the UK and Ireland would give them a ticking off and maybe an interview but ultimately let them in without enormous fuss. But if they actually weren't entitled to enter the country the airline would be at fault for not checking that before they boarded.

Thanks @FlyMayBe, very very grateful for the reply! Yes, was considering a double case but thought it might be too big and spreading the volume between two more stowable cases better but I'm sure you're right! Will scrutinise T's and C's.
Could be worse. Could be a cello.

Try saying no, you want to keep your bag with you and they may let you and move on to someone else.

It works sometimes, but it has also happened that suddenly they enforced new stricter rules and you did have to surrender your hold bag (for free) even though it was still within the previous rules. Probably because most people will say no if just asked.
I suspect they might give allowances for people on close connecting flights.

I can’t believe the people saying that they don’t know about the liquids rule.

It’s been in force since 2006. It gets mentioned all the time in casual conversation etc. It will have been on your details when you booked your flight and checked in online. The information was even on the boarding pass of the last flight I took.
The chances are that you will have checked your airlines website to check for the hand luggage sizes so it will be there also.

I suspect they might give allowances for people on close connecting flights.

Yes, I've been allowed to keep mine on that basis.

The liquids rule varies wildly between airports.
In Some places they don’t bat an eye over a 2 litre bottle of gin but the tiny little yarn clipper did worry them a bit.

I really think they should ban trolley cases in the cabin. You get a group of four travelling with one each and each is pushing the boundaries of size, and they take up a couple of bins and no one else can get anything in. If you need to travel with a trolley bag, put it in the hold (although I do think first bag should be free). It should be genuine hand luggage only (and certainly not two violins!).

Hi @MidniteScribbler,

Violins and small instuments are routinely carried in the cabin, as not to do so invalidates the insurance. Putting antique violins/violas in the hold with it's accompanying temperature and pressure changes can cause cracking along the body of the instument which renders the instument entirely unplayable. All professional orchestral musicians, soloists and teachers (no pun intended) travel regularly by plane, having to is just part of the job. Older students at conservatoire the same. Pretty much all professionals at this level play instruments worth tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds. These are sometimes owned by the musician, but also often on loan from a charity. (This is the situation we are in.) The instrument itself is actually their livelihood and very probably irreplaceable.
Most airlines understand this and are pretty accomodating and have a stated policy that violins/ violas can be carried in the cabin as part of, but not in addition to, hand luggage, hence my question to the OP.

I fly every couple of weeks - if it's a 2-3 night trip then hand luggage sized suitcase is totally sufficient, and I can get in and out without waiting in line to drop the luggage and waiting at the other hand for it to be delivered (or lost). It's not about money, I don't want to check the bag in, even if it's free.
If you have a 'genuine' hand luggage, by which I guess you mean a handbag, then put it under your seat and don't take up valuable bin space.

The poster who watched a man on crutches being made to hop: I've had to do that on the way out from Stansted. When we got to Toulon there was a wheelchair and assistant waiting, and on the way back they scanned the crutches, but they helped lift me through the body scanner. Great bunch of lads.