Job Discussion Forums

[Robert Russell]

Ever go to the States or somewhere and look in peoples' garages? This is the curse of accummulation and quite possiblly the need for a 3 car garage. On my last trip I had a set baggage allowance so had to carefully choose what I could abandon and what needed to go with me! It was a heavy load and I hated dragging it around! I went to Hong Kong for a few days to visit friends. I got on another flight and they would only accept half my baggage allowance granted me by the airline coming from the States. So, again, I had to separate chaff from wheat. Finally got down to the bare necessities. Here I am thinking that I want to do some trimming, in the event that I make another move. Well trousers are hard to shop for so I will hold onto them. It is easy to replace shirts. Well the library needs thinned out. Books are the heaviest and yet most loved items. Now I miss my guitar--wish I had brought it, but it is so hard to lug a guitar around.

What is your thoughts on this dilemma????

[johnslat]

Dear Robert,
Have you ever heard the George Carlin routine about packing and traveling? Carlin says we all need "stuff," and when there's too much stuff for our living quarters, we rent or buy a storage shed. He also says that wherever we go to school or on a business trip or vacation, we seem to want to cart stuff around. So we buy some more stuff to carry it in. Pack ruthlessly ( don't let Ruth help you ), I'd say. I've never arrived at a place and felt afterward I'd brought too little, but all too often I've realized I'd packed far more than I needed to.
Regards,
John

[Stephen Jones]

The really irritating thing is the "ambush marketing" used by the airlines. On my last vacation I took 36 kilos with me and came back with exactly the same weight (though not the same goods). They did me for excess baggage on the way back.

For over thirty years now airlines have maintained a standard 20k baggage allowance which in fact they scarcely apply. The fact that all airlines have the same allowance is in itself an example of price-fixing that would have been declared illegal in any other industry. They then have another true minimum allowance depending on route, which they change without a moments notice, and a set of excess baggage charges that are calculated according to how much spare money they think you have in your pocket and what proportion of that they can squeeze out of you before you resort to physical violence.

What makes it worse is the brazen effrontery of the check-in staff. When they have arbitrarliy decided to reduce the effective baggage allowance from 45kg to 30kg and charge you whatever figure comes into their head for the difference, they will tell you how generous they are being by giving you by letting you off the ten kilos difference between twenty and thirty.

If airline companies were not using their multi-national status to get out of obeying the law, they would be obliged to post both the real baggage allowance and the extra-charge to start with, and price-fixing would be banned. As air-freight rarely exceeds $2 a kilo, they would make a clear profit charigning $3-$5 a kilo and everybody would be happy.

[Celeste]

Stephen Jones-

From where have you been flying? When I have flown to Asia from Vancouver and back (a trip I have made several times in the past 6 years) on 3 different airlines, the baggage allottment has been the same. 2 bags of not more than 30 kilograms each, and one carry-on bag of not more than 10 kilograms (carry-on bag must fit in overhead compartment) and a purse. It has never changed. I have found out from other friends that the baggage regulations are different if you are flying from Australia or England, but I have never heard of then being so varied as you describe. What airlines are you using? Are you flying to an out of the way place? The airlines that I have used are Asiana, Japan Airlines, and Air Canada. I have flown to and from Japan and Korea.

[Paul G]

When flying out of China, it is not unusual to see people checking hundreds of kilos of baggage - no exaggeration, they check huge duffle bags and huge suitcases. I have been guilty of checking in excess of 100 kilos myself on a couple of occasions. I have never seen anyone charged for excess baggage nor have I ever been charged.

I guess it all depends on the airline and the country where the flight originates.

[Stephen Jones]

The particular flight I was referring to was the Air Lanka flight from Dammam to Colombo. I catch it three times a year. Although going out there is a ticket limitation of 20kg, as everywhere, in practise there has been a long-standing 45kg limit, though if the guy at the checkout doesn't like your face he'll charge on the whole lotl

It seems that the airlines all got into cahoots on this one, as there were complaints in the "Arab News" that Saudia had done the same trick on its flights from Dammam to India. The Middle East to South Asia route is the most overpriced and underserviced route in the world, except possibly for Aeroflot and Indian Airlines internal flights. They know that demand is fixed since workers have to go home, and so you pay nearly the same price for a Saudi-India ticket as you do for a London-India ticket.

The fact that many of you have taken way past the twenty kilo limit proves my point. The arilines let you take a load more stuff because they know they'll lose your custom if not, but every now and again they'll suddenly charge you as much as they can squeeze out of your because they know you're not going to forget about your flight and go back home.

I 've come across the problem twice before. Once, because the guy who was supposed to get the visa for my passport went off to the Philipines, I had to change a Saudia ticket for a British Airways one, and they charged me a whopping $20 on every kilo over 60Kg and had the usual cheek of pretending they were doing me a favour. The seocnd time was when I had booked a Riyadh-Cairo-Barcelona-Rome-Riyadh ticket using three different airlines, and for the short Barcelona Rome haul they tried to charge excess. When I explained that I was on a three month holiday, and showed the through tickets, they let me check in 30 kilos, and what must have been the heaviest handbaggage ever.

[Bindair Dundat]

The guitar is a tough call. The worst of it is the exposure to extremes of temperature. It can get pretty chilly in the cargo hold at 35,000 feet, and if it sits on the tarmac in Abu Dhabi for an hour or two, it'll get a bit warm. Been there, done that, wound up selling it rather than subjecting it to the return trip!

Buy cheapo guitars wherever you go, and sell them when you leave. A little looking will always get you something playable.

[Lucy Snow]

When my husband and I left Japan after living there for 8 1/2 yearrs, we decided (since his university was paying shipping charges) to take everything with us. This included a library of about 1,500 books--for years we didn't own a television, and both being Literature majors, read books instead.

We didn't ship everything, so we had excess baggage. We called the airline twice, explaining that we were flying from Tokyo to Vienna, and needed to know the baggage requirements and the charges for excess baggage. Oh, and we were bringing our cat with us too. We were told both times we called that (a) the baggage limit was two pieces of checked luggage per passanger and for any extra bags we would be charged about $150 USD/each and (b) the cat could fly in the cabin with us as long as we had a carrier that would fit under the seat.

When we got to Narita Airport, we were the first in line at checkin. First of al, the cat. Regardless of the $200 cat carrier, he was deemed to be "too big" (by 1/4 kg!) and had to go in the hold. No amount of arguing or pleading moved the checkin person. For putting him in the hold we were charged $300 USD. Fortunately, we had planned for this contingency, and had brought the proper carrier for shipping him in the hold.

Now, the baggage. We had a total of two extra suitcases, so we assumed we would be charged around $300 USD. Nope. The checkin person informed us that regardless of what we had been told when we called the airline, the limit was one bag per person, and we would be charged for four extra pieces, at $500 USD each. At this point I had to go to quarrantine and get the cat looked over, so my husband was left to deal with it.

Three hours later, after my husband worked his way up the hierarchy at the checkin counter, the airline finally charged us for only two extra pieces. Apparently, the two pieces/passanger is only for flights originating from North America, and whoever we talked to at the airline had assumed that since we were American, our flight had originated from the US.

The kicker? When we were finally able to board the plane, it was 75% empty. The Austrian flight attendent was shocked that they wouldn't allow us to bring our cat into the cabin.

We're moving to The Netherlands next month, and yes, we are taking all of our books and the cat, too. But we will be packing no extra suitcases.

And the cat's going in the cabin.

[scot47]

You might be cheaper shipping a container. A 20 metre container will hold a lot of books - but not the cat !

[Bindair Dundat]

One tip about avoiding excess baggage charges: If you can find a skycap, give him your excess baggage and a nice fat tip, and ask him if he can get your stuff on the plane for you. These guys can often scuttle around behind the counter, grab the right tags and slap them on, and send your luggage down the chute (or wheel it downstairs personally) while the counter attendants just stand back and stay out of the way. It's a collegial sort of thing: if the counter folks don't cooperate in helping the skycaps make a few extra bucks, the skycaps can make the attendants' lives hell. What goes around comes around.

You can also try bribing the counter attendants, but this is less certain and takes a bit of elan. All you do is smile and offer a folded bill while asking if there's any problem with your bringing along x pieces of luggage. You do risk embarassing yourself with this, though -- and sometimes you can get just as much mileage out of a smile, a wink, and a bit of bonhomie.

[khmerhit]

[Teacher in Rome]

I echo Scot47. I've always tried to use international shippers where possible. It's not that I have a lot of stuff, it's that 3 cubic metres is a lot of space. And they're super efficient. They come to your house, pack up everything quickly and carefully; and if anything breaks, you get compensation. The most expensive, most inefficient and most bloody-minded people I have ever had to deal with was Allied Verkamp movers in the Netherlands (to Italy). Hate to say it, but if they can screw money out of you, they will try. I was going to add something derogatory about the Dutch and stereotyped national characteristics here, but I don't want to put Lucy Snow off the place...

I'm amazed you can get more than 20kg on flights. It's only ever been this on flights in and out of Europe and Asia for me. My problem would be how to get more than 20 kg to the airport! I have never owned a car, and I'm not big enough to carry more than a few pieces of light luggage on and off trains / taxis.

[yaramaz]

Last June, at the end of the school term, all four foreign teachers flew home for the summer. I flew to Vancouver via the US, another flew to Toronto via London, and the other two flew to Cape Town. The Canadian flights were allocated a luggage allowance of 2 check in bags of up to 35 kg each, and a carry-on, purse, etc. The two South African flights got 20kg. That's all. And from Turkey, I think it's just as far to fly to SA as to Canada. All four flights were on different airlines as well. I'mnot sure why there was such a huge discrepancy.

[gugelhupf]

For reasons lost in the mists of time there are different (official) luggage allocations depending on where you are flying. North American routes have traditionally allowed somewhere in the region of 32kg for economy, while 20kg is standard for the European market - and for many other routes around the world. Anybody know why?

For decades the European routes were ridiculously overpriced but thanks in part to "low cost" carriers economy tickets booked in advance have just about halved since the early 90s. The big flag-carrier national airlines now charge similar fares to the new kids, but are forced to cut back on service to compete. This is why hot meals are now virtually non-existant on BA, Lufthansa and Austrian. By the same token if the airline can make a few Euros by strictly enforcing ballage allowances then the pressure is on for them to do so now.

[scot47]

Airlines interpret and enforce the rules differently. Some will demand payment if you are a couple of kg over. Others will not bother.

With some you get a better deal if you have a frequent flier card. Gulfair for example give 20kg allowance to economy class passengers. If you have a frequent flier card you get 30kg.

pm me if you want to know more.