US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

I was hoping that the pendulum would swing the other way with the scandal over too many passengers bringing out their bags on a recent AA evacuation caused by a burning tire. The push to eliminate checked bags has created a chaotic cabin environment that probably exacerbated the situation. There's no sign of it getting better either. The overcrowding of overhead bins creates a prisoners dilemma where flight attendants pressure passengers to put smaller bags under their seats, disincentivizing bringing anything but a big roller bag.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l2n-di3hJE

As someone who has traveled for a long time, I find two things to be true:

1. People like business travelers or those with even minimal levels of status/benefits (who don't pay for checked luggage) don't usually preferentially check bags because luggage gets delayed, it's harder to switch flights when there's a weather etc. problem, and they have to wait at the luggage carousel.

2. Hard and hard-ish roll-aboards are a menace. Especially in a world of generally more casual dress, soft-side luggage would make overheads a lot more manageable--understanding that some people really can't use shoulder bags or backpacks.

Plus all the additional time wasted in planing/deplaning the cabin in general as you wait for 90%+ of passengers in rows ahead of you to grab roller bags from overhead bins. Including the time wasting bottlenecks of "overhead bins full, everyone else must now gate check" guaranteed to slow the last passengers from planing and then on deplaning the crowds stuck in the jet bridge waiting for gate checked bags.

(Then there's the factor of how much time and space all that also wastes at security checkpoints.)

Checked baggage has the efficiencies of forklifts and trucks and conveyor belts. Just as airlines fixed most of the problems with those systems and got them to be efficient beasts they decided to disincentivize actually using them by charging extra for what is the cheaper cargo space. I wish an airline would have the courage to reverse the fees structure and charge for overhead bin space instead. (But then I also travel with IBS issues and my patience in deplaning has been severely tested enough that I know not everyone shares quite my annoyance at deplaning issues in particular.)

I was just on a flight with an Asia based airline where even the most basic fare had 2 free checked bags and some pretty limiting carry on restrictions. It was amazing how much smoother boarding was because most people only had a backpack.

I have never had a gate checked bag where you don’t pick up your bag at baggage claim except for regional flights on small planes where even standard carry ons won’t fit in the overhead.

And for the pedantic really small planes like Sansa in Costs Rica for their 30 minute flights between San Jose and other cities.

My wife and I are both Delta Platinum and it’s half and half. Since we always get upgraded to C+ with dedicated overhead and we board early, for non stop flights, we won’t check our bags for short getaways.

We hate lugging luggage around the airport for layovers and now that we don’t live in ATL any more, we almost always have layovers.

For me it's not having to wait at the carousel at the end, it's having to wait in that enormous line at the beginning. I really don't understand why they make it so much work just to drop off your checked bag before the flight.

I agree with both these points, though I'm much more willing to check a bag when traveling on vacation than when traveling on business. If I were to lose a bag on vacation there wouldn't be the same consequences.

On vacation I don't have my work laptop, so it's easier to toss toiletries and an emergency change of clothes in a small under-seat carry-on bag. Besides, tourists aren't expected to smell nice and look put-together, and are more likely to have a flexible schedule that would let them go shopping if the bag doesn't turn up.

Only once has the airline lost my bag while on vacation. It was only slightly annoying and they found the bag and got it to me eventually. I've seen a coworker whose bag was lost on a business trip to India. He was stuck wearing the same clothes - a tshirt and jeans - for multiple days. This included time in the office (which had a dress code) and at least one business dinner.

I don't want to check my luggage, I had them damaged or lost more than once.

My experience with United over the past few years is that there's a pretty quick pre-registered drop line. But that doesn't apply everywhere presumably. I rarely check bags but for some types of trips (generally hiking trips for me) it's sort of unavoidable.

I've seen everything from gate-checks on the carousel to a special pickup counter to leaving the bag on the tarmac covered in ice, with standard commercial airframes. It depends on airline policy and available airport infrastructure.

>If I were to lose a bag on vacation there wouldn't be the same consequences.

Not that taking everything carryon was really an option in this case, but I had a bag misplaced after a connecting flight was canceled. This was a group hiking trip but I had at least an extra day scheduled. Still spent about $500 to minimally restock although my bag arrived at literally the last minute before one of the guides left the hotel for our one-way walk.

And thats why i brought up Sansa. I flew into here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quepos_La_Managua_Airport#/m...

https://www.vacationscostarica.com/_next/image/?url=https%3A...

But that has more to do with the realities of the plane and the airport infrastructure like you said. It’s not about airline policy with regards to checked bags vs non checked bags.

On that plane, they not only weigh your bags, they weigh the passenger to make sure the plane isn’t over the weight limit.

i wonder if they could create a central locking mechanism where if a plane makes an emergency landing, it automatically locks all the overhead bins so passengers don't waste time trying to pick their baggage out. the only remaining thing would be smaller bags underneath the seats which i don't tihnk would delay anyone or at least not significantly as the overhead bins.

Many European (and other) airports now have self-done baggage drop-off.

At Copenhagen Airport, I usually get off the metro, walk to the luggage tag machines at the end of the platform and scan my passport (or boarding pass). That prints a bag tag (and boarding pass if requested), so after sticking that to my luggage I drop it off at the counter — I put the bag on the scale/conveyor, it scans the barcode, prompts me to press "Confirm" that there's no explosives etc, and I'm done.

I scan my boarding pass to go through the barrier into the security screening, walk to the gate, and very often scan the boarding pass again to get onto the jetbridge.

I can easily go from the metro to the plane without interacting with anyone. I understand this is Scandinavian bliss.

(Exceptions are trips to countries where I need my documents to be checked; e.g. to go to the USA a checkin agent has to see my ESTA visa waiver. Oddly, going somewhere like China which requires a printed visa in my passport does work on the machine, as the machine prompts me to scan it.)

Wait, you go through security without interacting with anyone? How does that work? Other than that though, this really sounds pretty much the same as my experience in US airports in the last decade.

I missed that — yes, sometimes someone says "anything in your pockets?" or similar, and someone else beckons me to walk through the metal detector. If I'm 'randomly' checked of course I have to speak.

I found American airports less hands-off (especially security, which is considerably more hands-on than I'm used to, "Sir, I will now rub your balls"). But then I'm almost always flying internationally out of the USA, so it's not a fair comparison against domestic (Schengen) flights in Europe.

Yeah, it gets worse than that, too, because some airlines have multiple types of gate checks. Delta, which I've flown the most on recently, lets you gate check at the gate desk up until like 10 minutes before boarding and those get tagged like normal checked baggage, sent to a baggage car for the normal forklift-ability, and will show up at baggage claim at your final destination, but Delta also lets you gate check at the last minute by dropping it at the end of the jet bridge and those get a slightly different tag, are basically thrown into cargo by hand, and also need to be pulled out of cargo by hand and so are thrown right back onto the jet bridge on the deplaning side of the next destination, not the final one. In the case of "overhead bins full" every bag after that full point gets into that second category of jet bridge bags. (And yeah, I've seen that particular case cause some traffic jams in deplaning.)

(Delta also has a third type of "gate check" if you count the regular checkin desk silliness to try to skip bag fees by checking in with 0 bags, getting asked if you want to gate check, and then checking it at the checkin desk like checked baggage is supposed to work. That also goes to your final destination, but it's a silly process of "no I don't want to check bags" to say that "yes, I have one bag I would like to check but it's not worth your silly fees to check if you want to charge me".)

I also have met people that like the "jet bridge checked baggage" and think it a feature, not a bug. I understand there is a flexibility it offers if a connection fails or is too delayed or what have you, but the slow, artisanally hand tossed baggage part of that seems so inefficient and slow down to the rest of us, it is hard for me to not see that as a bit selfish and something that should have fees to pay for the extra labor and time involved. Also, if anything it seems a reminder that Baggage Claim got put on the wrong side of Security checkpoints in the US out of a mistake from historic airport layouts, and if you were to design the system from scratch you'd put it before leaving Security and allow people the option to choose which destinations it needs to be picked up (but still defaulting to the final one), and maybe a "recheck" desk right next to it.