Whilst waiting in line to check my baggage with RyanAir for my trip to the Czech Republic, I could not help but notice the guy in front getting charged £58 as his bags were four kilos over the allowed fifteen.
Half of me wanted to ask him if he would like me to carry his excess for twenty quid.. That should by a sandwich and a drink on board.. Just. Then I remembered the question you get at the desk.. “Are you carrying anything for anyone else?” .. and I thought it not worth the trouble.
There has been much publicity around the no-liquids-in-the-hand-luggage rule being a farce, but at the same time, through conspiratorial eyes, I can see how it all ties in with the baggage weight limits also dropping by five kilos. All this excess liquid in our hold luggage must be earning the airlines a tidy penny or two. There must be a stat somewhere stating how much more we are having to pay to put our liquids in the hold and at the same time increase the amount of overweight bags..
So when it came for my turn to weigh in and my hold luggage was a massive eleven kilos under the limit, I asked the girl if I could have a refund.
She gave me a blank stare.
I asked if this was not justified and if no money was available, could she please offer my weight credit to a nice old lady behind me who seemed to have packed her greenhouse and contents.
Another blank stare.
She printed my boarding card and told me that if credits were offered, mine would be over £130 and as my ticket only cost £30 this was not really fair was it..
I gave her a blank stare back.
So.. You can offset your carbon use in other ways.. why not offset your baggage weight against other passengers? Maybe it’s obvious.. The airline has to itself offset these great looking low prices by stinging us in as many other ways as possible. Perhaps with oil prices doing what they are doing they may just have to up their prices and hopefully their standard of service too.
If you are going to charge for a service, no matter how much or little, at least make it a pleasant experience. There is so much cost cutting now it is getting ridiculous..
They have even cut using coloured ink from their boarding cards which saw myself and a couple of other passengers ushered onto the wrong plane! Can you believe it..? As paranoid as airports are about security, I managed to find myself on the wrong plane and only realised when I heard a fellow passenger talk about not being able to wait to get on the beach. Last time I looked at a map, the Czech Republic has no beaches. As I left the attendant apologised saying all the boarding cards look the same now.
One hour later, on the right plane, as as I stared down at my plastic sachet of gin, that I had been sold by a slightly guilty looking flight attendant for £6, I realised I should have taken the advise of the lush in the coffee shop. “Flying Ryanair” she said wobbling as she dunked a biscuit in her coffee. “Yes, I said.”
“Make sure you eat and drink as much as you can before you fly.. They will rob you blind.”
In addition to this.. on the way back my one allocated bag was not listed so after a little fight the guy on the desk said it was not his fault RyanAir had such stupid rules and let me take two on as hand luggage. He told me not to let them see.. I didn’t but security demanded I pay for a plastic bag to put a 100 mil roll on deodorant in. The plastic bag shop was the other side of the airport and the queue was massive.
So i asked the security lady.. “Why do i need a bag for only one item?” She said it was the rules…” I said “So you don’t really know do you?” She said “No.”
As i threw the brand new deodorant in the bin in front of her I respected her honesty.. But not her logic.
The more i look into it, the more I believe the liquids rule to be a farce. The sooner they bin it the quicker we can speed up the whole checking in and ‘passing through’ process..
International cycling is the way forward
The logic of airlines is weird. Coming back from America, my luggage was 1kg over the limit, my wife’s 10kg under. So ,on average, we would be under the limit. We pointed this out to the person on the counter, but she insisted that we juggled the contents of our suitcase. Strange.
Following the same logic I think that fat people should have a smaller baggage allowance, or pay more for their tickets. Why shod someone who weighs 100kg more than I do, and spills over into my seat, get the same allowance, or even pay the same for their ticket? It costs more to post a heavy parcel-why not a big fat body?
I tried that once.. could do about 100 miles a day. Some continental drivers liked throwing fruit at cyclists heads.
make em have it! 🙂
Dude, I love you! I love that you asked for credit for being underweight, that is so fucking awesome!
As to the liquids rules.. As I was changing planes in Heathrow on the way back from France, there was a woman asking passengers (as they went through their second secuirty screening) if they had any liquids, the woman in front of me looked at her with a confused look, then said no and moved on. When she asked me I didn’t even break my stride “Yes, 100mils one, 1 quart ziplock baggie” and I just kept going…
Stupidity it’s an international commodity.
This is a brilliant post. I am impressed with your ability to flabbergast the ticket-agent. It makes total sense that we should be able to share/redistribute our luggage weight allowance we are not using.
Another thing to think about is the weight of people. Why should an overweight person pay the same are someone who is slim?
Go figure!
Kudos! MAMK
I remember report in Germany about what happens to all those bottles of expensive perfume, scotch whiskey, fine wine etc that were being confiscated when people changed flights within the European Union. You fly in from London to Frankfurt with a bottle of duty free Scotch, but then when you change planes to continue to Cologne, the Scotch is confiscated because it’s over the 100ml allowance. It’s diabolically brilliant! Do the airport staff divvy the loot up at the end of each day? Well, according to above-mentioned report, apparently no.
Reporter: Why is it confiscated?
Airport PR man: It could be explosive or poisonous.
Reporter: Oh, so you throw all that expensive stuff away then? Airport PR man: No, no that would be wasteful.
Reporter: So what happens to the stuff then?
Airport PR man: Oh, we give that to the homeless people at Christmas time.
Only in Germany!
Great Web site !! love it all , and the articulate comments are a pleasure to read.
RE Overweight, the situation is truly crazy! I would never fly RyUn Air, they are Pirates in every sense, from the way they treat their own staff through to the passenger, who it seems are their ultimate inconvienece to them!
As for over weight passengers: i fully concur! how can someone be so physically obese that they ‘overflow’ into my (already) cramped seat, how would they feel if I sat on their lap for the entire flight!
solution SIMPLE, and would cause no offence : take the international standard for BMI, slightly overweight, get a warning and a health guide, into the BMI RED (obese) you have to pay the excess or an extra seat.
Internationally agreed medical guidelines, so the airline could hide behind the facts ! – something even the Pirates would gain (some) public respect for, rather than trying to charge to use the onboard toilet!