Flying longhaul .- what luggage to take?

[ChippyMinton]

Advice please! Will be travelling with 3 DC to the USA, for a 3-week trip. Is it better to take one or two large suitcase for everyone's stuff , or several smaller ones?

read the airline rules very carefully before you decide, we went 2 years ago with virgin and didn't read the small print properly. We thought one big case would be easier with the pushchair etc and had to pay a massive excess luggage charge vand buy another over there! Apparently it has got something to do with the weight the baggage handlers are allowed to lift.

Enjoy your trip!

Thanks for the tip - i'll check that out, as a friend has offered to lend us a huge case. Any more thoughts?

As many cases as you have compentent wheelers of them, or 3 larger cases.

Split all the clothes between them so that if one of the cases go astray you only lose a proportion of them and not two peoples entire wardrobes.

Pack a basic change for everyone in your handluggage, along with toothbrushes, so that if all your luggage doesn't turn up you have something to start the next day with

Def check with the airline Gatwick is esp strick these days and no bag can weigh more than 22/23 Kg (we got hit last summer as hadn't realised the new ruling).

If flying to the states pack at least a days worth of clothes into your hand luggage, so that you don't spend the first day of your holiday shopping hen the airline loses your luggage.

Airlines are getting stricter - Virgin has a 23kg maximum per suitcase, and when I flew with them this month they were getting people whose bags were only a couple of kilos over to unpack and move items around to other bags. Much more than that can be hard to haul on and off trolleys and luggage carousels anyway.

Are you doing any internal flights in the US? I got caught out last summer with several internal flights - we were charged $15 or $25 dollar per bag to check suitcases in, on top of the tickets I had already paid for. Apparently if we had been with the same carrier for transatlantic as well as domestic flights we might have got free check-in bags, but I had booked separately. With two suitcases and five domestic flights the extra charges really added up - worth checking details before you go if you might be affected.

Basically, back as light as you can, and I would second the advice to put a mixture of everyone's clothes in each suitcase, and at least one change of clothes/underwear in your carry-on bags.

Don't forget to leave space for any stuff you may buy. My dh was in the US a couple of years ago. He loathes shopping but came back with two new coats, a couple of bits for dd and a bra for me . He said they were so cheap he couldn't resist.