Four flights (two each way) in three days convinced me of one thing, which we all pretty-much already knew: Airlines hate their passengers.
It is possible that they hate their staff, too, because most airline staff seem distinctly unhappy these days. At least on American Airlines that seemed the case. Grouchy, frowning staff, from the counter personnel to the gate agent, to the flight attendants, were all that I saw. That hasn’t always been the case, so I figure they are just really miserable right now.
They are, of course, passing that misery on to already unhappy customers who are paying more for the tickets in terms of the base ticket price AND are forced to pay fees for seats as well as luggage these days.
In recent years, I’ve struggled just like everyone else to make sure I was following the rules airlines impose.
Carry-on size is awkwardly measured at the gate given that the written instructions online give a total number for external dimensions of bags, so I managed on more than one occasion to carry a bag wider and and shorter than what would fit in that silly metal box by the gate. Frustrating, to say the least.
Recently, I’ve found it easiest to carry one smallish bag (far smaller than the largest carry on allowed) to put in the overhead and a much smaller backpack and small purse. The backpack is the one I usually carry for work, the purse I switch to something easier to carry for travel than my regular day bags.
So it was while carrying these items, which were in total size clearly smaller than other passengers’ two bags, that I most recently ran afoul of a grumpy gate attendant who forced me to take everything out of my soft-sided purse and stuff all those items and the purse in my small roller bag or check the bag. The bags’ small size were irrelevant, she explained, because the number (3) exceeded the number (2) allowed.
So I bought a large tote in the Dallas airport — one large enough that it will hold both my small backpack and my purse. I could even tuck a couple Diet Dr. Peppers and a lunch bag in there. It was heavy, and much harder to carry, but I figured out a system. I have my little purse atop my rollerbag and my backpack on my bag, then, when I get to the gate, I pull my tote (it is a small nylon foldable bag that tucks into its own little bag) out of the side pocket of the roller bag, fill it with the backpack, purse, sodas, and dinner, then try not to groan as my back aches from carrying the monstrosity. Once through the gate and seated, I disassemble the whole mess and go about my business.
Not a perfect solution, but a workable one that follows the rules as airlines describe them today. No doubt they’ll change the rules again next month and I’ll be working to come up with a new way to deal with the airlines’ inability to convey a stable set of rules to passengers.
One last thing: After I wrote this, I watched a flight crew boarding at my gate. Three of them had more than the two bag limit in hand. Each had a regulation rollerbag, but two had two additional small toes, and one had three additional small totes (including the purse, which they all tell you must be included in the bag count).
It seems even more unfair to passengers struggling with silly rules to know that the crew don’t have to follow the same silly rules that they force so unhappily on passengers.
Added from the plane: They also try to freeze their passengers to death while in the air and no longer offer any sort of blanket or covering for shivering passengers.
