18 hours ago
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In significant news for budget travellers, Jetstar will charge its passengers up to $52 to put carry-on baggage in the overhead locker. Will the new rules finally bring an end to the entitled carry-on culture, where people hold up the airline just to jam their oversized suitcase into the overhead locker? Or is it just another way for cut-price airlines to gouge passengers?
Two well-travelled Guardian staffers battle it out.
The case for: ‘The carry-on arms race has gotten insufferable’
Tax the behaviour you hate, right? Can I hear it from the economists here? Is someone being awful? Make them pay for it and maybe they will reconsider.
And the behaviour I hate on planes (OK, one of the behaviours I hate on planes, I have a list), is the Entitled Carry-On.
Apologies to those who indulge: I have silently raged at you for years. You bought an unnecessarily huge suitcase, and you probably put another bag on top of it that you smuggled past the gate.
You congratulated yourself at the prospect of not having to wait a few minutes at the carousel after debarkation. And you jammed the lot in the overhead locker, leaving no space for travellers (moi) with more modest and sensible needs, perhaps nappies and food for children, or jocks and a shirt for a quick overnight stay.
Perhaps you didn’t get to the gate early enough, so after you boarded you squeezed up and down the aisle with your overpacked monstrosity in search of someone else’s locker space to colonise. Perhaps your baggage has left no space for mine, and I am the poor wanderer: apologising, blameless, bereft.
So pay up. If you hadn’t been so obsessed with squeezing everything in, if this carry-on arms race hadn’t gotten so insufferable, perhaps we wouldn’t have to have come to this. Civilisation is a social compact, and we all pay the price when free-riders abuse the environment (METAPHOR!).
Jetstar have made the overhead into the overhead. I applaud you for this, Jetstar. For this, and absolutely nothing else (refers to aforementioned list).
– Nick Miller
The case against: ‘I can foresee having to stare at someone’s arse crack indefinitely’
For years we were led to believe that only having carry-on baggage, and no checked baggage, was the best way to ensure your flight would depart on time. Now, apparently, this solution has morphed into a problem, with passengers supposedly blocking the aisles and stressing out while they try to heft their cases into the overhead bins.
The new solution is to cram your carry-on bag under the seat in front, or – surprise surprise – be charged for it.
Jetstar promises that as a fringe benefit, the weigh-and-shame procedure at the departure gates will be a thing of the past. At the same time, the airline announces those underseat bags will have to fit within certain dimensions. So now, instead of having your overhead bag weighed – what, you’ll have your under-seat bag put to the tape measure in the event of a line call? How will that make things quicker?
On board, instead of people holding up the aisle to stow their bags into the overhead bins – frustrating, yes, but a task in which, if there’s a genuine struggle, neighbouring passengers usually pitch in – I can foresee having to stare at someone’s arse crack indefinitely while they bend over and try to ram their bags under the seat in front. Unlike the overhead scenario, no one is going to get down and grub around on the floor of a Jetstar plane to help you; nor is there room to do so.
This will also extend the knees-in-back-of-seat phenomenon to the feeling of having your bum rummaged when someone tries to get their headphones out of their wedged-in bag from under your pew.
This reasonably well-seasoned air traveller, along with many others I’m sure, has long since adapted to going a week or so interstate or overseas with only carry-on luggage, sized to fit the overhead lockers – no checked bags. An investment in well designed, lightweight pull-aboard luggage soon pays off in terms of paying less to fly.
Now, any such luggage becomes a write-off if it fails to conform to the underseat stowage dimensions.
I seriously doubt this has anything to do with speeding up boarding and departure – Jetstar never seem to have given much of a shit about keeping to schedule – and much more to do with finding a new way to gouge passengers for their luggage again, in an age when many have learned to fly light and save.
– Warren Murray
