You’re allowed to carry bags onto the plane – but only if there’s enough space on board. Frequently if you don’t board early, there’s no bin space left. The airline makes you give up your carry-on and check it.
Airlines have been installing larger overhead bins, not so much for customer convenience (people hate having to check a carry-on bag when they’ve chosen to bring it on) but for their own – gate-checking bags takes time in the precious minutes prior to departure, and risks causing a flight to leave a few minutes late.
That’s also why airlines force passengers to start checking their carry-on bags too early, when there’s plenty of bin space left.
@united your gate agent is making everyone check their bags and this is the situation pic.twitter.com/k9tvQC8ulD
— Jonathan Kennell (@jonathankennell) November 15, 2024
This was not that. pic.twitter.com/X1UP3tab0I
— Jonathan Kennell (@jonathankennell) November 15, 2024
This is one of the two biggest complaints across airlines on social media (along with damaged bags). It is less of a problem on Southwest Airlines, since they don’t charge for up to two checked bags and passengers therefore try to bring less into the cabin.
Unfortunately larger bins aren’t a panacea. Even where bins are in theory large enough to accommodate a full sized carry on bag per passenger, that requires turning carry on bags on their side, and too many passengers don’t know to do this.
Now, United Airlines has a solution. They’re trying to teach passengers how to use overhead bins properly, to get the most bags in.
New (to me) today in the text message announcing boarding – how to use the new bins.
byu/doc_ocho inunitedairlines
United has actually been doing this for awhile – at least a year – but customers are seeing this much more often now. That’s because they send this boarding message to passengers on planes with their new ‘United NEXT’ interior that have these larger bins and it’s only recently that there’s a critical mass of these planes in the fleet.
There’s another trick to know, that airlines don’t tell you. These bins get heavy, since they’re stuffed with twice as many bags! However, with many of the newer bins you can actually pull down the bin rather than just pushing it straight up. It will help you raise it up with an assist mechanism. Although apparently that mechanism sometimes does break.
Remove the bins and allow the pax to check in their heavy suitcases and big trunks at the ticket counter .
Everyone will be happier .
Are those larger bins available on domestic flights? I’ve seen them on flights to Europe.
Good use of tech, especially only sending this to flyers on the planes with these bins. UA is usually ahead in this space.
United does a very good job at this. “Place your bag in the overhead like you would place a book in a bookshelf.”
Even when my cabin baggage allowance is 2 bags for the overhead bin and a somewhat smaller under-seat bag as a J class customer in the forward cabin, SAS has been informing me before I get to the airport that due to a full flight they will freely check in the bags for my convenience. In such cases I already usually have a free checked baggage allowance of four 70-lbs bags for just myself that I chose not to use for various reasons. Gate checking the cabin baggage only addresses part of the reasons why I go cabin-baggage-only when I do with them. Maybe others take them up on such offers, but I usually have no incentive to check-in bags that I can otherwise have as cabin baggage. Baggage mishandling issues and wait times for baggage delivery to the baggage belt are usually reasons enough for me to avoid checking in bags when I can.
The airlines have basically trained too many passengers to avoid checking in bags. This is the consequence, and it has been reinforced by fees for checking in luggage.
About book-case type placement of wheeled cabin baggage into the bin, that’s more difficult for short people to do, especially when such people have cabin baggage on the heavy side for them.
This can’t be emphasized enough. Limiting passengers to a single under-seat carry-on item will not only speed up boarding, but security-screening lines. And, if we’re lucky, might finally create a market for “door-to-door” baggage delivery services so we don’t have to lug our bags through the airport to begin with.