My travels over the holidays took me to visit family in Edmonton Alberta and Monterey California. In doing so, I took a total of seven airline flights and I watched a lot of people wrestling with luggage.

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Now that airlines charge about $35 (give or take) for a standard-sized checked suitcase, more people choose to use a smaller bag and put it in an overhead bin in the cabin. Some people try to push their luck and bring a bigger bag on board, but the gate agents make it very clear that those will not fit. I watched as an agent was quite snarky with one passenger and said words to the effect of, “You knew that was too big before you got here!”

What bugs me about this whole process is that I am too short to put a bag in an overhead bin. On a good day I am 5′ 2″ and getting shorter, and I cannot reach to put a 25 lb bag in a small space above my head. I should add that I am also 74, and weightlifting has never been among my skill set. So, I consider the fee for checked baggage to be a tax on short old people. It feels discriminatory, but I can live with it, up to a point.

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The point at which I feel cheated is when I get to the gate and people are encouraged to check their bags at the point of boarding, for free! Every single time, there are more bags than bin space, and every single time people happily agree to stow their luggage in the same airplane belly as my bag. I paid $35 for my piece of that belly, but they paid nothing. Now the fee has become a tax on short old people who plan ahead.

Once, on a previous trip, I did try to bring my small-ish bag on board but could not lift it into the overhead bin. At the time, there were no big burly men around to help me, and the flight attendants were staying well clear of boarding passengers, so I asked a woman who was my seat neighbour to lend a hand. She was not pleased. Even though she seemed capable enough, she clearly resented being asked. When it was time to leave the plane, she made a point of scooting up the aisle ahead of me so that she wouldn’t be asked to help get the bag down. That was the one and only time I tried bringing a bag on board.

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On one of my flights this trip I watched a woman struggle with the same dilemma, but her outcome was even worse than mine. She seemed to be about 5’0″ and of retirement age, and she was trying to lift quite a large bag into the overhead bin. At the point where she tried to tip the bottom of the bag up and over the lip of the bin she lost control of the balance and the bag fell.

At the same time a mother with two children was finding their seats. She was holding a small child while a little girl about five years old went ahead of her. Just at the moment when the girl came alongside my seat, the older woman’s bag tipped over and landed on the girl’s head before it hit the floor. There was immediate uproar.

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The little girl was crying loudly and her mother was furiously yelling at the older woman. I and my seat neighbours were all in shock and unable to move anywhere to help. Meanwhile the line of people boarding was stopped and flight attendants tried to find their way through the crowds from opposite ends of the plane to attend to the problem.

Making a bad situation even worse, the embarrassed older woman smiled as she apologized to the mother and child. It may have been a nervous response or a cultural difference but that smile was not received well.

Ultimately, one flight attendant and another passenger helped the woman put her bag into the bin, and the other flight attendant brought a bag of ice for the little girl to put on her head. I don’t know what happened to her after that, but I didn’t hear any crying.

Having watched all that drama happen right next to me has made me rethink my grumpiness about paying to stow my bag. Thirty-five dollars now seems like a small price to pay for ease, comfort, and passenger harmony. I will never again try to put my carry-on into an overhead bin.

https://snowbirdofparadise.com/2024/01/06/keep-calm-and-dont-carry-on/

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