On Sun, 22 Feb 2009 09:36:39 +0000, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 09:04:04 on Sun,
22 Feb 2009, Neil Williams remarked:
That's a somewhat different agenda, and could be assisted by allowing a
much more generous carry-on allowance.

The issue with this, apart from that it's the Government and BAA that
restrict it by size and to 2 items (all airports now?),

The "2 items" is a bid to reduce security queues, but I don't think the
*airports* have an agenda to restrict carry-on size, other than as part
of a general agreement with the airlines. In fact I think Heathrow is
the only airport where I've seen the "does your bag fit" gauges (in the
transit area) and policed by security people - rather than at the
check-in desk or the gate and policed by the airline staff.

From my observations at EMA, the gate gauges are used primarily to
extract some extra revenue from passengers whose bags are half an inch
too big, rather than to trap those people with hugely oversize bags.

Some pax really do take the **** with what they try to drag onto a plane.

Since the cheapo airlines charge a lot (in comparison to the cost of a
seat) for hold baggage, as you can't use the online checkins, there are
a lot of people who will squeeze *everything* into carry-on. From my
personal experience, the limitation to the number of people you can get
on a low-cost flight is not the number of seats, but the amount of
overhead stowage. It seems to me very unsafe - to have people with
vast amounts of carry-on on a flight, so restricting it gets my vote.


is that there won't be room for it all.

Easyjet seems to cope.

Didn't Ryanair announce recently that even your shopping has to fit in
the "one bag" in order to try to reduce this issue?

I noticed such a rule, didn't know how new it was.

It's certainly being enforced now. I came back from Murcia recently
and I saw three women who's bags were too big. They were being told
they had to go in the hold (the bags, not the women) and were not
happy, as a result.