Please explain airlines and baggage to me?

[Fattabby]

I'm a middle aged mum with very little overseas travel experience (never holidayed abroad growing up, not travelled much as an adult). I'm actually embarrassed by how little I have travelled abroad. It's been partly lack of money, DP hasn't wanted to go, and the last few years have meant a lot of illness/disability for me, so it's not been on the cards.

Now I'm in good health, I want to go away with my two young teen DC. They are very keen to go. I'm aiming for a short stay, 4-5 nights, somewhere beachy and very touristy in Spain/Portugal etc. Just for starters, and then maybe something more adventurous later in the year. It can't be a full week, which is frustrating, due to commitments it would take too long to explain.

I'm looking at booking flights - from Bristol - and am so confused about baggage allowances, what is permitted as carry on luggage, and and scared about getting it wrong. It looks like different airlines have different rules? But I could in theory book an Easyjet flight, and we'd have legit size luggage - then book a Ryan air return, and none of it would be allowed? I also can't tell if passengers are allowed a sort of bum bag/tiny cross body bag type thing, for passports and not much else, PLUS a carry on bag, or if everything has to be in the carry on bag?

The questions I have about holidays are all so basic I am embarrassed to ask friends, who are all pretty well travelled. Does the bag have to be rigid? If it is 'squashy' will it still fit in those frame measuring things? I'll be travelling on my own with the kids. The only thing I've managed to do so far is make sure we all have up to date passports (they all have years left on them and are pristine. Passports not kids).

Any help welcome. Please be kind. I know this sounds pathetic. I have looked online at airline info but find it very confusing. They seem not to tell you anything in a simple way until you start booking it, and then everything costs extra. That's another question - do I need to book seats? we would all like to sit together, as none of us are experienced travellers. TIA

I'm a regular flyer now, since becoming single after my DC reached adulthood, I quite often zip off for a weekend on my own. Its amazing how easy it is once youve done it a couple of times.

But, I have to admit, in your shoes I'd book a package. They often aren't much different in price and if something goes wrong, you've got someone to call for support with the language and local knowledge. If flight delays mean you need an extra night (or whatever) it's someone else's problem.

they don't even have to be under 100ml now at some airports, it's containers up to 2litres at some!

Don’t feel embarrassed about your lack of knowledge. Even for more experienced travellers, the different baggage rules between different airlines can be confusing. One could even speculate that airlines deliberately make it more complex than it needs to be so that they can extract more money out of people with the different add-ons of baggage allowances and seat allocations.

You’ve had lots of good advice and I have nothing to add except to say that you can book packages for shorter than a week- we booked a 5 night package in the Canaries last year. The booking was through EasyJet (they do packages as well as just flights) but I’m pretty sure that Tui also do shorter break packages. No worries if that isn’t of interest but just thought I’d mention it in case.

How exciting that you are in a position to go abroad with your children- it sounds like you’ve had some challenging times and really deserve a holiday! Hope you find a good location and that you have a wonderful time.

But you have to be aware that your return flight may be different. We fly out from Birmingham, which is so easy now, electronics and liquids stay in your bag. But I’m not expecting the same from Malaga (where I fly home from tomorrow).

Book jet2 with hold luggage included. Then you only need small backpacks in airport making life easier.
You can set dates in jet 2 for any number if nights
Make life easier book a jet2 ir tui package with luggage in hold

EasyJet do package holidays from Bristol for less than 5 days.

Not true. I posted a link to easyJet holidays up thread, which has packages for 4 nights, flying from Bristol

Have just been away with easyjet with dh and dd. It was cheaper for one large hold bag than to pay for 3 cabin bags. A normal school backpack sized back fits under the seats so can be your free carry on. Easyjet definitely let you do just one hold bag. It's also worth looking at easyjet for the hotel too, they do very good prices

Bristol is a straightforward airport. Most gates are only a short walk, a few that are a bit further.

I’ve booked trips with an independent travel agent before and it has worked well. Just say what you’d like and they fo all the searching. Cost wise was about the same as booking.

I’m happy to pm you the one I use or if you went on social media I’m sure you could get a recommendation.

Also please don’t be embarrassed. Good luck and I hope you enjoy the trip. I really like Menorca and Majorca. Big European cities can be good too.

To my surprise, Barbados airport has also got the advanced scanners, so you don’t need to keep liquids separate or unpack most of your hand luggage

not sure what the ryanair hate is, i fly with them a lot and never have any issue. They are very rarely delayed and have never lost my luggage. Once my underseat bag was too big so they made me pay, fair enough.

Small backback or handbag is free. Plus you can take a duty free bag with stuff you have bought in airport - so drinks or snacks can go in there.

If you pay for priority boarding you can take a cabin suitcase, it can be hard or soft as long as it is correct size.

But probably easier to just check in a large suitcase - i think its a 20kg limit although you can pay for more.

Its true ryanair split you up. I don't mind being seperated from adult family members but if its a young teen, after you check in you can still pay to move a seat. (children you have to pay to sit together)

Me and DD did 4 nights in Torremolinos last week from East mids, I paid for 1 check in bag which could be up to 23kg on the way out with jet2 and 20kg on the way back with Ryan Air. For the flights we each had a standard backpack and that was fine each way.

It was a lovely few days away so if you can do Bristol to Malaga it’s worth looking at. 3 hr flight and Malaga airport is very easy to navigate and only a 10 min taxi from Torremolinos with taxi and uber pick up points right outside the main doors.

we booed it as a package through loveholidays, 4 nights is an option in their drop down search facility so must be pretty common.

I never take liquids in my backpack, just put it all in the suitcase in an ziplock bag just in case anything leaks and check it in. Bag I carry on just has passports, medication, 1 change of clothes and my electronics. For a short flight you really don’t need much. I only put a change of clothes in on the off chance my suitcase goes missing. There’s always time to kill after getting through security so I accept that prices will be high and buy a snack and drink then for the plane.

Oh OK , that’s brilliant. I was just going on what OP had said and assumed fewer flights from Bristol.

however I've only had couple of conversations IRL about it, and both times got a 'why on earth would you pay for hold luggage on such a short break?' reaction. WHich made me feel really silly, and like I was just someone who can't pack properly.

This is a quirk of the way budget airlines worked for around 20 years before the more recent changes.

It used to be (up to about the late 90s/early 00s) that on planes you'd get hold baggage and hand luggage included in the flight price, but flights themselves were expensive. So everyone checked their suitcase with most of their stuff in, and brought a smaller, often flexible carry-on bag about the size of an overnight bag, with a few essentials in it. Obviously post 9/11 you had the rules about liquids etc in hand luggage as well. I was fairly young at the time so I might be wrong, but IIRC carry-on/hand luggage wasn't really restricted and just literally meant anything you could carry. So people might have a carry-on bag and their handbag and a laptop bag for instance, and that was fine. But you could put a reasonable amount of stuff in your suitcase and that was more convenient so you weren't lugging it around the airport and on/off the plane.

Ryanair then started the thing where they gave 1 item of free hand luggage within certain dimensions but charged for hold baggage. Other budget airlines followed suit. The hand luggage size at this time was fairly generous around the size of a small suitcase, and so people started to see this as a loophole and try to take advantage of it by getting totally free baggage. Companies started selling suitcases specifically sized to fit within Ryanair's requirements, as they were notoriously the strictest. Because you get one of these suitcases included with every seat on the plane it kind of became standard practice (if you don't mind packing light) not to bother booking hold luggage at all because you can fit enough for up to about a week into one of those small suitcases, or enough for an adult + small child for about 5 days. However, once everyone was doing this it became a bit ridiculous because planes which are designed for passengers to put most of their luggage in the hold and only carry a few essentials on the plane were suddenly having a majority of the passengers with one of these large cabin-sized suitcases. It's also a massive pain to fly like this TBH especially if you are carting around multiple smaller suitcases when flying as a family. But cost-wise, because it costs so much to add a hold bag for Ryanair in particular, and because it avoids the whole baggage carousel/lost baggage issue, it made absolute sense in most cases to maximise the hand luggage allowance by using suitcases, and it did seem a bit bonkers to pay for hold luggage. Most people used rigid ones in this model, BTW, simply because 10kg of luggage is easier to roll around an airport than carry. Some budget airlines still use this model.

Ryanair of course are allergic to the idea of stopping charging for something that they have previously charged for so they had to come up with a new way to encourage people to return to the old practice of putting the bulk of their luggage in the hold in 1-2 larger suitcases and carrying only smaller bags on board. For a while they used to have someone standing by the boarding queue and offer to take any suitcases for free into the hold but this slowed down boarding, so they needed a more efficient solution.

So now, since about 2-3 years ago (?) the free hand luggage allowance is teeny tiny, definitely smaller than the carry-on bags people used to use in the 90s, smaller than a large rucksack, and you have to pay extra either to bring one of the old "Cabin sized suitcases" as hand luggage, or to check a larger suitcase into the hold. It's annoying because they make it as confusing as possible, but OTOH we now always get hold luggage and it is much nicer to just have a small and reasonable sized bag with actual essentials to carry around the airport rather than having to keep track of a whole wheeled suitcase per child.

On a lot of flights now 15kg hold baggage is cheaper than overhead baggage, and removes a lot of stress. I work through all of the screens to decide what the best option is. There's normally a back button so you can redo the selections

If you fly BA you get a handbag and cabin suitcase as standard. Can work out cheaper than a budget airline.

You've already had lots of good advice, OP, and I hope you have a fun and relaxing holiday!

I just wanted to say - if you do take hand luggage/cabin bags, then watch out for ones with wheels, as I see a lot of people being charged extra at the airport because they haven't taken account of the wheels adding length to the bag, taking them above the maximum dimensions.

Don’t feel bad Op the sizes and rules change every year.

TUI do any number of nights from Bristol, They will do you a package with their own planes or EasyJet. It tells you what luggage is included.
Put in you dates, Bristol airport, max budget and tick all the places you fancy. Sort by TripAdvisor rating. Theres over 2000 holidays available for your criteria in August.

@Fattabby Good for you for pushing yourself a bit out of your comfort zone to give yourself and DC some fab life experiences ❤️

No question is too daft, so ask away if there is anything you want to know ☺️

I also didn’t travel as a child. I’d never been on a UK or abroad holiday until I was 19 (UK) and 23 (Abroad). And have only been maybe 5/6 times since then so I’m certainly no pro 😅 but I know enough to get me through.

I have a friend who finally left an awful relationship with her two young teens recently and I helped them book their first ever trip abroad ☺️ None of them had any experience of airports/flying etc and they managed so well and had such a ball that she booked another holiday for this summer as soon as they got home. I was so proud of her and it gave her so much confidence to see that she can manage these things herself ☺️

If you want to you could give your date and travel requirements/budget etc here and I’m sure we would all happily point you in the direction of some nice hotels and good deals ☺️ I agree with others that a package holiday would be the most ideal for your first experience just to remove some of the potential areas of worry for yourself. Do you have a specific destination in mind? What about somewhere like Majorca? Palma is a beautiful city!

Personally, we usually take a backpack style bag each that fits under seat (Ours are from CabinMax and are relatively cheap and have been great ☺️) and we check in hold luggage. I’m a worrier so for a beach holiday pack my under seat bag with one swimwear, one lightweight day dress, one light evening option, a versatile flat sandal, some knickers and my charger and medication 🤣 I stress over hold luggage not making it to the destination and me being sat there for days with just my passport and the clothes on my back (I’m plus sized and options are often limited when shopping so the thought of navigating that abroad stresses me out) 🤣 So at least I know I can survive a few days with those options. Everything else including all toiletries goes in the checked in bag. Saves any faff at security ☺️

I do usually take a small crossbody bag too for money/passports etc. Some airlines are fine with this and others aren’t so to save any hassle I just make sure it fits inside my under seat bag and pop it in there for check in then take it out for our time in the airport and put it back in for boarding ☺️

Under the seat bags are free.
The cabin bags which go in the overhead lockers you have to pay for.
All the airlines have different size rules.
Some , confusingly , let you take a cabin bag for free.
If you want to sit with your kids , easyJet usually sit you together. Ryanair won’t.

Not silly questions at all. I would say always try to fly out and back with the same airline if possible in case anything goes wrong and also because the baggage allowances differ. I spent much of a city break this year stressing because the cabin bag that was fine for easyJet on the way out was 1cm too big for RyanAir on the way back. Needless to say they didn't make me put it in the guage! From my limited experience flying they normally only make you put anything into the guage when it looks wildly over, such as people with huge rucksacks or things that are blatantly the wrong size. But it doesn't stop me worrying!

I'd make your life easy the first trip and do a package with TUI or similar - all arranged for you and sensible baggage allowances. Then when you have taken your confidence up you can branch out and try new things.

Oh yeah we always book seats to sit together as I dislike flying and want to sit in the aisle in a certain part of the plane so the extra money is worth it.

I did look into booking a package holiday, but unfortunately none were for less than a week.

Try jet 2, there 231 five night holidays from Bristol to the Balearics alone.

BertieBotts, I really appreciate that luggage explainer! It’s basically a quirk of airline history. No one would sit down and design the system we have now.

For everyone recommending package holidays - I’ve looked and you are right, Easyjet and a couple of others do run package holidays with flexibility around dates. I was hoping to get away at the start of Easter (there and back before Easter weekend). I was hoping to get somewhere sunny in Southern Europe. I’ve had a look and am just overwhelmed with the decision making tbh. Even with the package deal. I think my expectations are unrealistic/uneducated and I need to spend a couple of days getting to grips with that. I’ve found myself close to tears tonight trying to read reviews and wonder about B&B v self catering. I don’t want to drive, I’m worried my kids have seen too many youtube adverts about holidays and expect something amazing, which I can’t deliver. I was hoping to find somewhere near a beach, with a pool (indoor as well as outdoor) that isn’t stag and hen central. I don’t want to play golf or any sport, and we don’t care about entertainment. I’d love a town to walk around, with a few cafes and restaurants. I don’t think I will be able to afford to go away over summer, prices are just way too much. I don’t think I can afford all inclusive, but could do B&B. Someone suggested a bespoke booker, and maybe that is a really good idea. I just need to get to grips with myself!