Here We Go Again
Or, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Checked Luggage
When the world feels chaotic and frightening, it can help to tackle minor problems and make tiny improvements in our lives. At least we’re doing something, and something is more than nothing, right? Which is why I am here, for the fourth year in a row, urging you to save yourself the hassle and stress of attempting to wedge enormous quantities of carry-on luggage into the inadequate overhead bins, and instead to check your luggage when you fly.
I’m actually not blaming passengers for the delays and inconvenience from too much carry-on luggage. I am inveighing against an upside-down universe in which the airlines charge us to check our bags. It is baffling to me that the airlines seem to believe that luggage is a luxury add-on. I mean:
It is aggravating and unjust that a checked bag costs as much as $40. But I nonetheless believe that we will be happier, more considerate, and more relaxed travelers if we either pack lightly enough to fit our bag under the seat in front of us, or we just pay to check our bag. Believe it or not, I actually love flying, and one reason is the freedom from having to worry about the overhead compartments.
Air travel has changed to the degree that it is no longer sustainable for every passenger to carry on a large suitcase (plus a purse or backpack, a laptop case, and a couple of shopping bags for good measure).1 When the airlines designed the overhead compartments, they assumed that the planes wouldn’t be totally full and that most passengers would check their luggage. These assumptions are, of course, false. In addition, planes cram in more seats than in the past, and carry-on bags are larger than they used to be. Most flights are at or near capacity, with even the wretched middle seats filled. Nowadays there is an order of magnitude2 more stuff for the same amount of overhead space, and as a result, boarding has too often come to resemble gladiatorial combat over scarce resources.
My first post on this topic argued that airlines’ policy of charging for checked bags makes the entire airport experience, and not just the boarding process, unpleasant:
[This policy] encourages people to schlep overstuffed carry-on bags, which they then laboriously rummage around in at security, slowing down the line; to argue with gate agents about whether their bags are small enough to go into the compartments, slowing down the line; to obstruct boarding while they attempt to jam the bags into the aforementioned compartments, slowing down the line; and—to take a personal example—to injure other passengers when their enormous bags fall on them, slowing down the line as the flight attendant pushes back up the aisle to get an ice pack.
You can read the rest here:
By contrast, the second post in the series describes the best boarding process I have ever experienced in all my years of flying:
The passengers were about sixty young men on leave from the Naval Station Great Lakes, and me. The time from the moment boarding began until everyone was buckled into our seats and ready to go was a mere ten minutes, and deplaning was even faster—about five minutes total. This was a full flight too (the plane was small). How is such a thing even possible? you may be wondering. Simple: The troops followed every rule, and no one tried to seize an advantage for himself at the expense of someone else. They lined up in an orderly fashion, they boarded in the order specified by the gate agent, they brought small bags that could easily fit under the seats in front of them, and they helped the lone civilian, me, with my small bag too.
You can read the rest here:
In fact, as I argue in last year’s post, checking our bags helps us to be finer people—more patient and forbearing with our fellow travelers—while airlines’ current policy inflicts a moral injury by bringing out the worst in us:
While most situations are not zero-sum, overhead compartments are the exception; they are pie, not potluck, and there will be winners and losers. This zero-sum situation causes us to be selfish and grumpy with each other and to behave in ways that are beneath us—crowding forward, cutting in line, breaking the rules, and, worst of all, making gate agents’ and flight attendants’ jobs more difficult.
You can read the rest here:
The stress and frustrations at airports can provoke magic-wand thinking. If only we had a magic wand, we would make those airlines shape up! we mutter to ourselves.3 I wish I could wave a magic wand to make the airlines stop charging us for our luggage, period. Luggage is part of traveling! It’s not extra! Regardless of whether our bags go in the cargo hold or in the overhead bin, they ought to be included in the price of our ticket. But realistically the airlines are not going to give up on a source of revenue once it has been established. And so the second-best magic-wand solution, which would vastly speed up all aspects of travel, is for the airlines to charge for carry-on and made checked luggage free.
In my darker moments, I go so far as to entertain fantasies that one day the airlines will allow anyone who doesn’t need the overhead compartments to board first. It would only take us about five minutes to get settled! Let the other passengers haul their gargantuan bags, wrangle with the gate agents, crowd into the aisle, tussle over the compartments, and wrestle their gear into place. Why not reward those of us who are not using up scarce overhead space with a relaxed boarding process and a head start on the in-flight entertainment? This policy would also encourage more people to check their luggage so that they too could take advantage of early, stress-free boarding, setting up a virtuous circle.
But ok, fine. I recognize that none of these changes will happen. At airports and in so many other situations in our country, we may long for systemic change. We may wish that our culture would stop emphasizing individual action and instead would just fix the problems that plague us. But systemic change isn’t always possible. We passengers don’t have power over the other people at the airport, and still less do we have power over the airlines. We have power only over ourselves. And so, given that we are stuck with the airlines’ current, illogical system, why not view the frustrations of flying as an opportunity to take charge of our own happiness?
Hence my suggestion that we make this one small change to decrease our anxiety at the airport. If we don’t need the overhead bins, we can treat our time before boarding as the start of our vacation. We can repair to an airport bar to enjoy a beer and watch the NBA finals. Or we can sit calmly, listening to a podcast or reading a book, as my husband and I did before a flight last week. Everyone else at the gate was crowded in a tight clump, nervously watching and waiting, pushing and jockeying, while we were so blasé that we didn’t even realize our boarding category had been called until the gate area had emptied out. We rose, leisurely strolled to the gate, and, unhurried and unencumbered, took our seats on the plane. Such peaceful moments in the midst of chaos can be yours too, if you stop worrying and learn to love checked luggage.
How about you, readers? Are you a checked-luggage or a carry-on person? What was the best (or worst!) flight you’ve ever taken? Are you rooting for the Pacers or the Thunder? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
The Tidbit
Enough ranting! Time for something wonderful!
On a recent overseas flight, the movie pickings were slim. (Or, rather, as an extremely frequent flyer on that particular route, I had seen all the good choices already.) But hold on! What’s this? The French Connection had just been added to the Classics category! I had never seen the film, so I eagerly put it on.
The car chase is indeed every bit as extraordinary as everyone says, but my favorite scene comes earlier in the film, when Gene Hackman goes into a bar, and a girl group is performing “Everybody Gets to Go to the Moon.” Zowie! They absolutely blow the roof off the place! Please enjoy this homage to Gene Hackman, of blessed memory, set to this absolute banger of a song:
You may think I’m exaggerating, but scroll up to the photo at the start of this post, which is from a news story about Thanksgiving travel. The lady with the pink sweatshirt around her waist is dragging not one but two large wheelie bags, plus she has a great big purse slung over her shoulder. How she will manage to get all that onto the plane, let alone during the busiest travel time of the year, is anyone’s guess.
A rough estimate, I grant you.
Of course, if magic wands were real, we wouldn’t need the airlines. We could just use our wands to teleport.
On checking everything, a possible contra thought: there was the time my wife and I were celebrating Christmas and New Year in Connemara, Ireland, but my checked bag decided, perhaps wisely, to instead spend the holidays in Merida, Mexico.
"We rose, leisurely strolled to the gate, and, unhurried and unencumbered, took our seats on the plane." One can also get this blissful feeling by being a first-class traveler who can board at any time with nary a worry of stowing anything since the concierge/attendant will handle all the impedimenta. However, of course, the real benefit to flying first class is to board, well, "first," so one can gaze serenely, with a slight twitch of the head and a faintly bemused smile, as the lumpenproletariat scrabbles toward the rear.