Ridiculous amounts of hand luggage on short haul flight

[Printedword]

A feeling of deja vu and beyond on our flight back from Florence to London City Airport earlier this week. Im back on the topic of hand luggage.

A BA flight on BBC a small plane where everyone has got a decent baggage allowance.

The flight was not full but the overhead lockers were and about 15 suitcases had to be taken off the aircraft and go in the hold before we could take off. One person had somehow got as far as boarding the plane with something that didn't even fit properly in the overheads.

Has budget airline travel conditioned us to be unreasonable about luggage?

Of course not, but didn’t you open it & pop it in a duty free bag?

Im not sure I understand the problem, the carry on luggage is suitcase sized, so thats what I take. I have my handbag, which goes under the seat in front and my carry on which goes in the overhead lockers

I think personall the problem is people putting big coats and shopping in the overhead lockers, they should be for suitcases and backpacks only

Actually on our recent flight from LCY I heard an elderly couple moaning that 'oh they've got everything but the kitchen sink I dont know why people have to bring so much on board'

Was it you OP?

The issue on the flight you were on OP was that the airline gate staff weren't clued up on what would fit in the overhead lockers and hadn't counted up or measured anything prior to boarding. The likes of Ryanair would count along the queue and know when the overhead lockers were at capacity before boarding.

Ime on recent shorthaul flights in the past few years, flying times seems to be estimates which mean departing later than the published time isn't much of an issue. Airlines are concerned they are ready to depart on time so as not to incur fines from the airport, but other than that there is slippage built in.

@Needtosoundoffandbreathe

Ime on recent shorthaul flights in the past few years, flying times seems to be estimates which mean departing later than the published time isn't much of an issue. Airlines are concerned they are ready to depart on time so as not to incur fines from the airport, but other than that there is slippage built in.

That’s not really how it works- yes there’s the timetable times, but then there are the on the day allocated “slot” times and I’d really caution thinking missing allocated start up times or allocated take-off times isn’t much of an issue.

The exact timings for a given flight are not allocated by the airport, that’s done at a national level or above and depends on traffic flow. Miss those times by even a few minutes and renegotiation is needed...if you’re lucky your new timings might mean a small delay…on a bad day routing through busy airspace/airports it can be an hour plus.

So whilst the crew might give the impression it’s all relaxed in reality behind the scenes there will almost certainly be a lot of pressure to get away at a specific time.

@Printedword

BA has stupid polices like offerig pre boarding go people who hand in luggage when it’s busy.
This encourages stupid hand luggage behaviour.

Please re-read my post. I haven't said what you seem to think I have.

What do you mean?

Possibly, in part.

Yes the airline will have seasonal “slots” issued by the airport (it’s those that are reflected in the timetable). Yes there can be penalties if airlines fails schedule regularity with regard to those.

OTOH On the day the crews still have to chase ATC generated slots, which may or may not have relevance to the timetable. Crew/groundstaff/airlines do care very much about missing those.

I think you are right, there are so many wheelie cases that they sometimes announce that you can't put other types of bags in the overheads. If it's all part if a documented EasyJet type arrangement I suppose that's fair enough. But on a flight where there are no baggage charges it feels unfair.

Also, every single person with a wheelie case also had another bag to put under the seat to max out carry on.

BA did this when I flew with them back from Nice a few weeks ago. Agree it only encourages the practice.

Though the main reason is the extra charges for suitcases.

Of course I opened it but boots had no carrier bags so it was a massive faff!

Reported

On my last short haul they said ruck sacks had to go under seats. Some were too big because they were proper cabin overhead baggage like smaller wheelies are