At Southwest Airlines each passenger gets two free checked bags. Some people don’t want to leave a benefit unused. Sure, you could check your pickleball in your luggage. But if you’ve only got one bag to check, you could also send the pickleball off on its own as your second free checked bag – and see whether it makes it, gets caught in the airport baggage system, or bounces away?
That’s what one passenger decided to test, one the Sunday after Thanksgiving flying Richmond to Atlanta. Not only did it make it out to the aircraft, it made it onto their connecting flight in Atlanta too and arrived safely at their destination.
Several years ago an Australian man checked a can of beer as luggage on a Qantas flight. The can of beer made it onto the baggage carousel at his destination, too. No worries, mate!
Inspired by this story, blog reader Hemal G decided to see whether this would work out using his free checked baggage flying first class on American Airlines from Charlotte to Newark. So he decided to check a bottle of deodorant.
Unfortunately, while the deodorant was successfully loaded onto the flight and taken off of the aircraft in Newark, it never made it to the baggage carousel there. He filled out a missing property form with American’s baggage office and asked them to reimburse $5.79 plus tax. Six years later he’s still waiting. I suggest that he file a lost luggage claim with the credit card he used to purchase the ticket.
If there was a contest for “How many people can I make hate me in one day?” this guy would certainly be in the running.
I was traveling recently, and was gifted a cricket bat. It didn’t fit in the suitcase that I brought, but I had an extra bag check that I wasn’t using with Frontier. So I had them slap a luggage tag on it. Two pounds. It did not make it. Haha. They found it the following day, and delivered it to my house.
As far as the Southwest passenger wanting to use all the free benefits, including 2 checked bags, not one, there is the much abused wheelchair benefit.
How is this a travel hack? Seems just a stupid waste of time and resources to me.
Most airlines could, under contract of carriage terms, either refuse to carry the ball as it is or could require it be placed in the original packaging or suitable container (same thing technically you are supposed to do with strollers checked in, which is why any agent doing their job makes you sign the liability limit release). I gather since this was a very, very small Southwest station (Richmond) the agents knew what was up and communicated through to ATL who probably had people specifically tasked with transferring that item knowing it would end up on social media. At many airports an item like that won’t go down the bag belt so has to be a tub or carried manually to TSA screening.
LOVE Southwest’s bags: without carry ons you get on and off the plane real fast!!!
Glad to see them getting this free publicity.
PS other airlines learn and copy this.
LOVE Southwest’s “bags fly free” policy: without carry ons you get on and off the plane real fast!!!
Glad to see them getting this free publicity.
PS other airlines learn from Southwest and copy their policy — they could go back to boarding 25 minutes before the flight depart, imagine the savings!!
That wasn’t “a bottle of deodorant”; it was a stick of deodorant.