I have a confession to make: my carry-on bag is usually very heavy. Very heavy.
When I travel, I like to travel with only one bag. It’s not that I put rocks inside. But my electronic equipment is not exactly light. Consequently, my bag is relatively heavy…I’d estimate about 30 pounds.
Importantly, though, I never ask for assistance when placing it into an overhead bin. That is common courtesy. As James from OMAAT said, “No crew member should be injuring their backs lifting over weight bags that passengers can’t lift themselves.” In the USA, carry-on weight doesn’t matter. American, Delta, and United do not have weight limits on carry-on bags. Even stingy Spirit allows up to 45 pounds.
But throughout much of the world, carry-on bag is both size and weight restricted. One avenue that many (myself included) have used to bypass this requirement is to check in online and totally bypass the airport counter. While counter agents often force you to weigh your hand baggage before handing you a boarding pass, gate agents rarely enforce weight limits (or even size limits).
Until now…at least on Qantas.
Qantas is now weighing all passengers carry-on bags at the gate on a limited number of flights.
Qantas’ logic is that heavy bags are unfair to other passengers and pose a safety risk:
Cabin bins that are too full or bags that are too heavy can cause a safety risk for both customers and crew.
That’s a fairly objective point. And Qantas does not seem to be using this as a revenue-generating measure. Indeed, passengers who are found to have hand baggage that is too heavy will be forced to check it…but at no extra charge.
CONCLUSION
I think Qantas’ new policy is reasonable, especially since it won’t be charging people who are caught trying to sneak extra baggage through. Of course it is an annoyance, but I’ve seen what happens when overhead bins fly open and heavy luggage drops on the head of a passengers…it isn’t pretty. It’s why I take my electronic equipment out before I place it in the overhead bin.
I saw this a couple of weeks ago in Aus at first hand and saw several people forced to surrender their bags with a choice of not flying, most behaved very reasonably but there are always one or two.
Just a heads up, LHR T2 – Star Alliance terminal it’s now routine to weigh Y class hand luggage at the gate and the same is applying, over the limit which is usually 7kg and it’s off to the hold and it’s no use complaining, they have the tags printed at the scales which are at the head of the jetty. At the moment at least they are not bothering F&C passengers about weight but it may come, volume is being enforced in all classes.
It’s little wonder that Star Alliance passengers try to get away with HLO, as understanding the luggage entitlements is quite difficult: the razor-sharp minds runnng the show preside over a policy ( loosely defined) in which every member airline has different rules, ranging from Thai and SQ ( 30 kg in Y , even on the cheapest ticket) to LH ( zilch for many fares). It goes without saying that nowhere on the ludicrous Star website is there anything resembling a chart of entitlements.
Consequently passengers flying several star airlines on one itinerary are faced with several conflicting policies. In that context, weighty hand carry becomes attractive.
It’s a sham alliance, functioning in name only.
Well you clearly don’t like *A!
How is what you are saying about *A different to say oneworld where BA allow 23kg of cabin bags and most others allow 10kg or less?
Luggage entitlements are not aligned across any of the alliances but do keep ranting, it’s quite funny.
Totally agree Paolo! Last year I flew PHX-IAD on UA, IAD-FRA on LH and FRA-ATH on A3 on a SINGLE ticket issued by UA. First 2 flights went without a hitch then the A3 gate agents started weighing and measuring carry-ons and sure enough, I was robbed EUR40 to gate check my TUMI carryon! Argued my case to no avail with the gate agents and a couple emails to *A went unanswered. Total ripoff.
A3 hand luggage allowances are published on their website for all to see and they are enforced across their network.
Your problem is? You weren’t robbed, you were charged the published price for checking in a bag that was either too big or too heavy to meet those requirements.
When you have a legitimate point to raise, A3 customer service is generally excellent.
I never help anyone put a bag in the overhead bin. If it too heavy for you to lift, it should NOT be in the carry on area. Tough. My carry on weigh less than 12 pounds always.
Finally some common sense. And I totally agree with you.
See you in 50 years, yeah?
When you both would like to fly with a carry-on, that might just be slightly too heavy for your body, on a flight full with wise folks, with your type of “common sense”
What airlines should is to charge a considerably higher fee for carryon and check bags for a lot less money or even nothing. I think the problem would be solved.
I was forced through this today, as the only person on a Qantas flight chosen to have their carryon weighed-the same bag thats been through 100+ flights, with a significant amount of those on qantas, including a connecting flight right before where it was no issue, the point you are missing is it is only 7kgs…if you take into account a laptop weighing 3-4kgs, if you bring a camera and a lens you are already over…that’s not even including the weight of the bag…I have a lot of checkin baggage I could use and still bring a suitcase, but cant put my laptop and camera and hard drive into my suitcase for obvious reasons and though I’ve bought super expensive ones so they are light, I have still only been able to keep it down to around 12 kgs…and thus even as a “platinum” (oneworld emerald) qantas frequent flyer, I still got chosen as the only person to have their bags weighed despite some bringing 2 bags that they couldn’t lift…the weight thing is BS since I put it in my friends bag and it went into the same overhead bin it would have otherwise-I now will have to stop flying Qantas because I wont always have friends/colleagues with me who I can give some of my carryon and I cant checkin my important devices and I cant not bring them since they are essential to my work…Completely ridiculous move and insane to implement only to certain people. Meanwhile I could bring a small bag full of bricks and be fine or I could bring multiple large bags with no weight inside and those would be better for Qantas…
I have never asked for assistance in putting my bags up and also it should be noted the compartments state they hold 72kgs and would struggle to fit 5 bags, so at 7kgs each they are still going to be way under and when they could careless about the size of 2 bags then now I have to bring 2 bags and use more space in the overhead…