airline weight issue

hollis_f wrote in post #14895471
Sounds feasible. Apart from one question - how does it make any difference if the extra weight is carried in the hold or in the cabin?

If it's just a matter of mass then every passenger should be given an allowance of 30kg which can be split between hold and cabin baggage, with the restriction that cabin baggage must be one or two bags small enough to easily fit into the overhead lockers.

It makes alot of difference. I've been on flights where we hit extreme turbulence and the overhead compartments opened up and things started to fall out. Do you really want a 30 lb bag falling towards your head. The occurrences may be rare but once is too many times. Have you listened to the announcements prior when boarding, the overhead compartments are for lightweight articles only. Fuel is expensive but the cost that airlines pay in insurance is atrocious and if someone even put an overweight bag in the overhead they are not the one that will be sued if it falls on someone's head. No one likes to put much under the seat in front of them and I just shake my head with the things that people try and stuff in the overhead. One thing that slow down an arrival more than anything is the time that it takes many people to retrieve their bags from the overheads.

I used to design flight schedules for airlines in Canada. If we could shave 5 minutes each turn an aircraft did then maybe we could fit in another whole flight by the end of the day. It is a complicated process with the basics is that you can't make money with them sitting on the ground. We used to alot 35 minutes for a narrow body (737, 319, 329 types) from the time an aircraft arrived at the gate until they pushed back. Widebodies doing international flights will get up to about an hour 15 depending on the route and airport in question. In that time we had to offload everything, clean up the mess left behind and load everything for the next go round. If we could speed things up by limiting the amount of things people carry on then that is what would be done.

Normally the reduced carry on weights such as 7.5 kg is done on international long haul flights. Domestic operations in north America have much higher allowances and agents tend to look the other way alot. Trying to keep the weights down are important when you take a rather large aluminum cylinder and keep it aloft at 35,000 feet for up to 16 hours.

The rules are there for the safety of both the public and crew and aren't instituted willy nilly. I see it as somewhat of a hardship now that I am traveling with alot of gear but I make my plans based on the rules and if that means that I ship some of my gear ahead of me then that is what I do. The situation posed by the OP here hardly constitutes that sort of extreme measure and he should be able to get that to within half a kilo of the limitations. There are always those that post that they have never been challenged at the gate and to those I say you have been lucky. I have been at gates when people had to surrender some of their cabin baggage to go in the cargo hold. It brings some people to tears, which doesn't work on most gate agents. Everyone has a story why they should be exempt and everyone has expensive items in their carry on. You can try and work your way around the rules but don't cry foul if you get caught.

ssim wrote in post #14902864
The rules are there for the safety of both the public and crew and aren't instituted willy nilly.

My question is - how do airlines like British Airways manage to run a business with a 23kg hand baggage weight limit on their flights? If they can do it then any other airline can do it.

hollis_f wrote in post #14903156
My question is - how do airlines like British Airways manage to run a business with a 23kg hand baggage weight limit on their flights? If they can do it then any other airline can do it.

Now don't go starting to get all logical and all that.

But really, I suppose the design of the particular aircraft is important. Fore/after CG is a lot more important than lateral CG. If you have a plane that is already designed a bit front heavy and you have the baggage mostly in the back, you could possibly screw up the CG by putting too much weight at the front. Of course, they have ballast the deal with such things but if you can fly without ballast, you conserve weight and make greater profits. So I'm still inclined to believe that the REAL reason for this is to just increase profits.

Here is some interesting reading for the curious. http://www.faa.gov …t/media/faa-h-8083-1a.pdf

hollis_f wrote in post #14903156
My question is - how do airlines like British Airways manage to run a business with a 23kg hand baggage weight limit on their flights? If they can do it then any other airline can do it.

running a business, and running a business well are two completely different things... google "british airways profit margin"...

joeseph wrote in post #14907690
running a business, and running a business well are two completely different things... google "british airways profit margin"...

Yeah, they only made a profit of slightly more than half a billion quid in 2011! LINK

Just wear the camera around your neck and weigh your bag without it. I often carry my DSLR around my neck on flights and they have never ever suggested it be weighed. I'm in Aus too. Obviously the lady on the phone had to say the exact rules but in real life noone is going to be that hardass.

EmyB wrote in post #14907833
Just wear the camera around your neck and weigh your bag without it. I often carry my DSLR around my neck on flights and they have never ever suggested it be weighed. I'm in Aus too. Obviously the lady on the phone had to say the exact rules but in real life noone is going to be that hardass.

I guess you missed the part where he asked, and got the answer that they would weight the camera anyway.

But in the end, I really think it has much to do with what planes they have and what the overhead compartments are designed to stand. Because as already noted, most people put gear in the overhead compartments. And I have on more than one occasion seen them fall open in turbulent weather. The advantage of sitting at a window is that I wont snap my neck if something falls out.

pwm2 wrote in post #14907880
I guess you missed the part where he asked, and got the answer that they would weight the camera anyway.

No, I saw that. But as I said, obviously the woman on the phone HAD to stick to the official line (what else could she say?!). But in real life there's no way that would actually happen and it certainly never has to me with many flights with a DSLR around my neck. What next, they weigh your coat/mobile phone/kindle/car keys/wallet pfff.

I had this problem with Virgin Atlantic, I had flown with them 7 times before my previous (and last) time.

Their overhead baggage policy was 7 KGs.. All of the previous 7 times of flying with them my carry on bag had not been weighed, they decided to weigh my family's bags and found I was 1.5 kgs over, on querying why they had never weighed the bags before the supervisor said that they always weighed the bags as a standard measure, at which point I argued the fact stating and showing all of my previous flights with Virgin to which point I asked the supervisor if she believed I was lying about the fact that they never weighed my carry on bag, her response was swift.... "Yes"!!

At this point I promised that I will never ever fly Virgin, I promptly moved the lenses around the other carry ons with my family and we boarded the plane once on board we moved the lenses back to my bag.

From now on I fly with BA due to their 23KG carry on limit, there is only about £50 - £60 difference in flight prices.

Martin,

The rosy glow that Richard Branson had a few years ago is vanishing rapidly. For a topical example, his West Coast rail line a while back was a constant litany of failures, no wonder the Government has decided enough is enough. Bransons response? Rather than put his thinking cap on and improve his bid another time I gather he plans to sue the government.

I'd be furious with the response you got about not previously weighing bags as well. We are so fed up with being treated like cattle at airports we try to avoid flying these days. Sad that its deteriorated so much.

5 days ago I suggested that the total weight seemed high for what was being packed and the scale may be wrong. The items packed including the bag itself all seemed to weigh significantly more than the "official" weights. OP mentioned that they were going to try to find another scale to weigh on and we never heard anything since. I'm wondering if this may have been the problem.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #14895267
Aviation Facts:
1) More Weight = Higher Fuel Burn
2) Higher Fuel Burn = Less Profit

Airlines world-wide are (reportedly) operating on angstrom-thin margins so whatever they can do to fly as light as possible, they'll do.

Yeah but then they should start weighing people and charging thin people less and fat people more.

Individual baggage weight limits are more to do with safety. The 23kg weight limit on checked in baggage at BA, for example, is because that's the highest weight deemed safe for the baggage handlers to lift per bag. Likewise, the 7kg cabin baggage restriction is there to ensure you can easily lift your bag into the overhead compartment, and that it doesn't pose a dangerous risk to any passenger in case it falls out during the flight (although frankly even 7kg could injure someone, but I guess the chance of that happening is very slim).

Having said that, I've never had my cabin baggage weighed or questioned. I usually fly BA business class where you can take two pieces of hand luggage, and I usually just pack all my stuff into two cabin size bags, and I always get away with it. Backpacks, in particular, are probably assumed to be light.

onona wrote in post #14921214
Individual baggage weight limits are more to do with safety. The 23kg weight limit on checked in baggage at BA, for example, is because that's the highest weight deemed safe for the baggage handlers to lift per bag. Likewise, the 7kg cabin baggage restriction is there to ensure you can easily lift your bag into the overhead compartment, and that it doesn't pose a dangerous risk to any passenger in case it falls out during the flight (although frankly even 7kg could injure someone, but I guess the chance of that happening is very slim).

Except that BA have a 23kg limit on cabin baggage.

hollis_f wrote in post #14921225
Except that BA have a 23kg limit on cabin baggage.

Oh yeah. I actually forgot about that. Still, my cabin baggage usually weighs more and it's fine. At any rate, you get what you pay for. Fly with an airline like BA and you're not going to run into issues; cheaper airlines, especially budget ones, are the ones that get sticky about this.

onona wrote in post #14921234
Oh yeah. I actually forgot about that. Still, my cabin baggage usually weighs more and it's fine. At any rate, you get what you pay for. Fly with an airline like BA and you're not going to run into issues; cheaper airlines, especially budget ones, are the ones that get sticky about this.

Virgin had a problem with it (see above)