Thursday, February 5, 2009

Avoiding the New Baggage Fees

(taken from http://duckdown.blogspot.com)

Ways to ignore airline baggage limits...


Many of the airlines have placed weight restrictions on baggage. I figured I would share a tip that allows you to beat the 50 pound baggage limit...

I dropped the family off at the airport this week and noticed several couples waiting inline. They were traveling to Puerto Rico when the counter agent told them there would be an additional fee for overweight baggage. Another person standing in line heard this conversation and took some items out of their bag and put them into the backpack they were carrying.

This next couple made it to the counter and placed their bags on the scale where the counter agent preceeded to put the baggage tape/sticker on the back and handed it back to the couple to carry over to the TSA baggage folks. Of course, the counter agent moved along to the next customer when this couple decided to simply take stuff out of their backpack and place right back into their luggage.

Of course, TSA is solely responsible for checking bags and doesn't really care if someone either adds or removes stuff prior to it being handed to them. In many airports, especially when crowded you could do this without a TSA agent nor counter agent seeing it.

In other words, you are an idiot if you pay for exceeding baggage limits...


I don't think I agree that you're "stupid" for paying excess baggage fees. I think it's important to show integrity at all times. At the same time, I think it's negligent on the part of the airlines to not pay attention to this inconsistency. And if you're just barely over the weight limit, this could be a way to prevent unnecessary costs.

2 comments:

Marie said...

I agree that you should have integrity at all times . . . as someone said to me recently (maybe you), I'm not willing to lose my soul over a couple of dollars. At the same time, I agree that it is gross negligence on the part of the airlines if they are going to impose those kinds of restrictions to not enforce them. After all, very few people are going to have pangs of conscience over a rule that they find stupid or patently unfair to begin with (which I think the excess baggage fees are, especially for the first checked bag).

Lindsay Duerden said...

I started reading this blog and got excited because it would be useful when going to Germany and then remembered that I'm not going anymore which totally bummed me out. lol. I agree with Marie though :)