Flybe cabin bags

[icanbewhatiwant]

Has anyone flown with Flybe recently and taken on a cabin bag? I've not flown for over 20 years so it's new to me.
We bought 2 of the smallest cabin size bags I could find. I searched and searched as they were all 40cm wide.
But we found 2 that I thought were small enough. But just measured and they are a couple of cm wider.
Do they really check? We are flying from Southend. Just me and my 10 year old, to Rennes.
I don't know whether to chance it or not. £100 fine either way is a lot of money.

Look on the bright side, if you check a bag into the hold you have less to wrestle with on the plane itself. Plus, room for souvenirs on the way back!

Yes thanks everyone. I have decided to just pay the extra now and put a bigger case in the hold.
The only thing is it won't let me add another case to my booking. It says add date of birth. But date of birth is added and correct. We even tried deleting the date of birth and re adding it. I have printed boarding passes so the date of birth is correct.
Frustrating. I'm going to call them in the morning.

ELM8 I got ours in Debenhams. She said it's the smallest cabin they do. It's a hard shell case. But like I said, the handle makes it bigger.

I measured and re measured our case before flying with Flybe recently. It was within the measurements stated on the email from Flybe. Got to the airport and it didn’t even slightly go into their tiny size checking thing. Paid £40 on the spot to be able to check it into the hold. Went online whilst away and paid something like £20 to check it in for the return trip. Total rip off. We could have taken a hold-all but this big was within their measurements stated. We saw lots of other people in same situation.

Yes it isn't worth it. It's £62 return for me to put all our stuff into one bigger bag in the hold. I still can't add a case on though it shows error message. I'll phone at 8am. I will be annoyed if they aren't checking cabin bags though. But it isn't worth the extra worry. I haven't flown since 1995 it may be that long till I fly again!

Think it depends on the airport. They aren't particularly strict on domestic flights but it's mostly business travellers with just laptop bags going for the day.

They aren't particularly strict on domestic flights

They totally are. Flybe are ridiculously strict and have been slated quite recently for this because the baggage sizer at one of the Irish airports (I think) hadn't been updated since they resized their luggage restrictions last year. Lots of people flying out and not being able to return without paying extra for the bag, the bag that fitted the sizer on the outbound flight.

On the plus side it's more relaxing to check in a case. You don't have to stuff your toiletries into a tiny plastic bag and worry about their size, you don't have to juggle your case through security or drag I round the airport and best of all you don't need to rush to board to ensure your case is near you.

If you've printed boarding passes, you can't usually add luggage after that, but you might be able to if you call them.

They measured every wheelie case when I flew Manchester to Paris with them last month. I had an earlier version of one of these and I'm not sure if mine is exactly the same size (it says 36 cm wide) and it just fit in the metal box, and actually got stuck so I had to really pull it out while standing on the base of the frame and I'm surprised I got away with it to be honest, as they were charging a lot of people.

It was a codeshare flight and a lot of people were actually on an Air France booking so were working to the more generous AF allowances rather than the Flybe one.

I phoned up and booked a hold bag. He said you can't add a bag after check in. But others in our group did. Never mind. It's done now. Thanks for replies.

I have a friend in an ongoing online feud with Flybe about exactly this: they changed the rules while he was away so a bag that had been accepted on the outward journey was refused on the way back. They seem to be real sticklers.

I had something similar. According to the attendant they'd changed the measuring boxes in one airport and not the other. Thankfully they put my bag in the hold for free As it was my return but plenty of other people weren't so lucky, and there was a queue of people waiting at the customer service desk to complain about it.

I thought I'd add that I paid for a bigger case to go in the hold. Lots of people had bags bigger than mine, but they squashed into the cage. Not sure my hard ones would have squashed in. But at no point was anyone actually asked to put their bags in the cage.
So I would have been fine. So I could say I wasted £62 but it was nice not having to pull the cases round after check in...I'm glad I didn't have to lift them up to the overhead lockers either. We just sat straight in our seats and watched everyone else struggling with theirs 🤣

That was at Southend airport by the way. A bigger airport may well have checked size. Rennes is also small. I didn't even see a cage their.

Thanks for the update, OP. FWIW, I've never seen cases checked for size at Bristol but often at Malaga.