..to ask a potentially daft question about luggage allowance?

[Panicmode1]

We haven't flown all together as a family of six before - we've done dribs and drabs or DH and I fly alone, so this may be a totally daft question, sorry!

We are about to go skiing - if I pack one (large) bag for four children, will it be allowed? Ie as long as we don't go over our luggage allowance for 6 of us, it won't matter how many bags the allowance is spread across - or will they mind if one bag weighs 60+kg?

depends what your airline ticket says - usually a limit on what each bag can weigh!

International airline regs state no bag can be more than 32kgs

Brilliant, thank you. We are going with Club Med (Thomas Cook charter I think) and it's a 'ticketless flight' so it just states the baggage allowance. But useful to have the total as 32kgs, thank you.

They have to be 32kg ish max to ensure the baggage handlers can move them.

Makes sense - I hadn't really thought through the 60kg (although it wouldn't be because when it's fully packed I can lift it!).

There's usually a size (height, width and depth) limit as well so that it will actually fit onto the plane. The suitcase must be huge to fit 60kg! I can usually only manage about 20-25kg in each one.

You need to check with the airline you are flying with as it varies between carriers (and sometimes depends on where you are flying to). 32kg is the max any baggage handler is allowed to lift, but your actual allowance could be much lower than that. A quick google suggests it may be 15kg per person for some short haul Thomas Cook flights.

It was more a hypothetical case I have a wheelie one which I can pack for four children in - it's probably 30kgs when full but I will check!

No, you won't be able to do that. Would be a health and safety issue for the guys doing the loading/unloading.

From Thomas cook website:

If you're travelling with more than one person, you can combine your baggage allowance together, as long as any one case does not exceed30kgsin weight for lifting purposes. If you're travelling to the USA, Canada or Puerto Rico you are unable to combine luggage.

It's always worth checking every time you fly on the airline website, because rules do change and what was allowed last year, isn't necessarily the same this year.

But the ultimate 'per item' limit is 30-32 kg for baggage handler H&S even if you can share between you. This is quite a lot - I have a big dive bag and it's always around 29-30 kg with all my dive kit, two wetsuits and a week's worth of holiday clothes.

Also look out for code shares and subsidiaries - sometimes the plane will actually be operated by another airline who will have different rules.

I'm flying tomorrow and coming back Friday and both flights are indirect and two of them are on subsidiaries so that's four different airlines I've had to check and for one flight the information isn't clear because it's dependent what type of plane they put on .

And make sure you are aware that Thomas Cook hand luggage allowance is much smaller than most other airlines - 5 or 6 kg instead of 10.

The 'information' on our 'ticket' is rubbish, but that is really helpful Barbara, thank you.