Sometimes you’re cutting it close when you travel, and when you land off of a flight you’re going to have to head straight to work. You need all your tools and supplies with you – no time, even, to… stop at Target? And, I guess, that’s one reason that someone might check a plastic trash can as luggage.
One person passenger checked a rubbish bin as luggage. It’s too big to fit in a suitcase, so they just had the airline agent tag it. The can made it all the way through the airport’s baggage system, onto the plane, to the destination city and finally to the baggage carousel at their destination.
Someone on my flight checked in a garbage can. So many questions.. pic.twitter.com/oHSUmlTpTH
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) April 28, 2023
If you get free checked bags – perhaps you have elite status with the airline, you have their co-brand credit card, or you’re flying in first or business class – then you might as well use the benefit!
Loose items are hardly new to checked baggage, and not losing them isn’t new either. Six years ago a man famously checked a beer can as a standalone bag and it made it all the way to baggage claim. American didn’t quite deliver a single bottle of deoderant, though. It most likely got lost in the airport baggage system.
Years ago, I noted a couple attempting to check in an ice chest full of frozen shrimp. The ticket agent refused the request stating the container was not properly sealed and the possibility of leakage. The couple left the ice chest next to a trash can in the concourse.
Thank you for the chuckle. Just when we thought we had seen it all.
@Exit – Eek. Imagine shrimp water all over everyone’s baggage
Why not? There’s no reason that the item you travel with has to be in the form of a suitcase.
30 years ago, after we bought our first apartment, I left for a six week trip through Mexico. My luggage was a briefcase. When I returned I used the full complement of two checked items and carry-on for purchases of housewares (rugs, ceramics, artwork, glassware) and packed some of it into a large cylindrical basket, which I checked. That’s our laundry basket to this day.
I also checked a full-sized umbrella once which they wouldn’t let me carry on in MAN.
I took an extra suitcase with me on a trip to Texas to bring pecan wood home. I like to smoke meats and my wife, from Houston, loves pecan smoke. I found a guy selling 50lb trash bags of wood for $25 so I took some home. Only problem was it was really about 75lbs of wood. I packed 50lbs in my suitcase and carried the other 25lbs on the plane with me. The TSA agent looked at me, confused, and asked me if I couldn’t buy wood where I lived. We had a good laugh about my reason to which she told me to call her the next time I needed pecan wood, that her yard was littered with the ‘trash trees ‘. I didn’t even think that checking a trash can might have helped me…
If it wasn’t for the Air Canada sign at the carousel, I would have assumed they were trying for a claim with Delta for their ‘20 minutes or 2500 miles’ checked bag guarantee.
It was probably one of the Houston Astros.
We have all seen posts about folks checking in a beer can…
In Japan, however, you can literally check in a bag of expensive souvenirs in an open unsealed shopping bag, and it will arrive with nothing missing. Domestic flights only though!
I’ve checked a case of beer bottles. Just wrote FRAGILE all over the box and it made it!
On a trip to Puerto Vallarta, I went charter fishing and caught eight yellowfin tuna, all over 100 lbs. each. The captain gave me 80 lbs. of the most beautiful tuna loins which we froze in the freezer of our rental condo and he kept the rest. Bought two plastic coolers at the MEGA store, wrapped all of the tuna in saran wrap and foil and packed it in the two coolers, which were then shrink wrapped at the airport and checked as baggage back to ORD. Didn’t even have to pay overweight charges!
@jon:
> In Japan, however, you can literally check in a bag of expensive souvenirs in an open unsealed shopping bag, and it will arrive with nothing missing. Domestic flights only though!
I know Japan is very good about things not being stolen but that’s not the same as things not being lost in the baggage system–the whole system is designed to handle heavy things rapidly. I would certainly not check anything spillable, period.
I’ve seen people check in trash bags as suitcases. Nothing new here… lol The thing that really used to get me was when the Asian / Filipino community’s would check in boxes full of cooked food that would stink so bad, especially when being loaded inside of belly of an aircraft lol
The way airlines treat luggage a trash can makes more sense and just immune from the beating up from handling
Does it roll ? Or have a handle?
I usually check a moving box from a local office supply store to bring gifts and souvenirs to my family overseas. Being in a box already also makes it really easy to tear off the airline tag and slap a parcel/mail tag to mail the last mile rather than carry it as I go vacation before visiting said family members.
>In Japan, however, you can literally check in a bag of expensive souvenirs in an open unsealed shopping bag, and it will arrive with nothing missing. Domestic flights only though!
I travel frequently in Japan, but my home base being in the US, the first time I saw somebody doing this I thought it was going to get mangled in transit… but it came out pristine and even in its own outer wrapping bag that the airline put on.