Airline industry insiders say passengers have become carried away with carry-on baggage, leading to costly delays. That’s prompting calls for changes to how airplanes charge for baggage, with some discount airlines like Sunwing and Spirit already beginning to flip the fee structure so passengers pay for the privilege of keeping their bags on board.
I flew last year. Each checked-in bag was $50 before tax and it took over an hour before the baggage carousel even started to spin. Everyone who had carry-on bags were $50 richer and could leave the airport immediately.
That’s why. The checked-in baggage process is expensive, miserable, and frustrating. Even worse if they lose your bag which is becoming increasingly common.
Last time they lost my bag it showed up the next day at my door, which was pretty nice.
People stopped checking their bags because they kept getting lost in 2022.
Every flight I’ve taken since then is pure fucking chaos as people go up and down the aisle looking for space and the staff keep asking if anyone wants to check their bags for free (but nobody takes them up on it). One person actually tried taking my wife’s bag out of the luggage compartment to put theirs in her spot.
I don’t know if the rates of lost luggage have changed, but every time I fly everyone makes a point to tell me not to check my bag out it will definitely get lost, which never happened to me until this year. The $50 extra they charge is just another incentive not to.
Our nationally-named airline used to do the same: they’d lose a bag like 1% of the time, but it’d be at your door after the next flight. The bag was super-priority, and my buddy was one of the bag-bashers whose job was #1 delivery of lost bags and #2 regular baggage stuff.
Then the 90s happened and it started going to owl shit.