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Budget airline, Norwegian, weights your carry-on twice

Norwegian is offering amazing fares to Gatwick, direct flights in many cases. The cheapest fares allow for 1 carry-on and handbag- with a combination weight of 10kgs (read the conditions for your fare twice). At Gatwick, at check-in, they check your carry-on and handbag weights before they issue the ticket. They tag your carry-ons. At the gate and before boarding, that is after you do security, they have a scale and they do a second check of the weight of your items. In all, if you exceed the limits of weight, you must pay either at the first check-in or at boarding. I can tell you that at arrival at my final destination, about 75% of the passengers were waiting for luggage. The carrousel had, as expected, tons of carry-ons. In my case, we were 2 traveling and we got charged for one bag. At the first counter, they did some weight redistribution math and charged us 70 pounds for one bag, 20% of the roundtrip fare.

The service was very good although I had a 2-hr delay at departure. If you pay for meals, they go seat-by-seat delivering your order. If you did not pay for meals, you can buy everything on-board- including water. There is no free water service in long flights; my flight was about 9 hours. All drinks are between $5 and $10 on board. My flight had free Wi-Fi, slow on the first flight. Hard to connect on the return one. Bring your headphones, or you can buy a set too. Have a great flight.

Posted by
8181 posts

Sounds about right. You save more money being prepared reading an airlines rules and complying with them so there are no surprises.

Posted by
172 posts

Norwegian is my favorite airline-hope they don’t go bankrupt. We are flying nonstop Orlando to Gatwick this summer for $570 round trip. Unfortunately they just leased our flights to Hi Fly airlines so we’ll see how that compares. Norwegian is scrambling to not cancel flights in spite of engine problems with their 787s.

We always bring our own food and water. No problem. We have never been charged extra for our carry on luggage. My wife and I are staying in Europe four months this summer (only three in Schengen) with just a carry on bag each. 10k is 22 pounds. You must have had an enormous carry on bag to be charged for 70 extra pounds.

Posted by
2916 posts

Why weigh carry-on bags twice? If your bag is within the limits the first time it is weighed, why would the airline need to weigh it again? Is it because of what you can buy at the airport shops in between?
Also, I'm curious about the price difference, if any, between paying for a checked bag in advance and paying for checking a carry-on that didn't make the weight cut.

Posted by
4 posts

To clarify. Our carry-ons were the compact hard ones, not even the extensions were opened. That is, the most modest but exceeding a few kilos. I could have opened them to wear hiking boots and extra jackets or heavier clothing, for instance. So were most of the carry-ons I saw at the carrousel, the typical hard ones for the overhead. I could have pre-paid for one piece- 60 pounds, 6 hrs. before travel. I assume they do the second check at the gate for what someone else suspects- people buy things at the tax-free shops before boarding. I have paid for luggage with other budget carriers and none of them have this double-weight check. Indeed, none of them have ever weighted my purse, I had a purse not a backpack. So, I want to share with those that are frequent flyers since this- news to me. I lived in Europe for 5 yrs and the only other airline that charges for even the boarding pass (if you don't pre-print within Europe) is Ryanair. Thank you reading!

Posted by
9022 posts

Why weigh carry-on bags twice? If your bag is within the limits the first time it is weighed, why would the airline need to weigh it again?

Not on Norwegian, but on a couple of others, we've seen families working together to take stuff out of their bags and conceal the stuff for weighing at check-in. Then stuffing the excess back into the bags once they've gotten tagged.

Posted by
4535 posts

^^ I would assume what Stan says. It isn't buying a few things at the shops, it's pulling things out of the bags before checking in and then stuffing it back in before security.

Posted by
9436 posts

Norwegian Air is my favorite airline too.
I have never had my carry-on weighed. I fly Oakland (San Francisco) - Paris. And I’ve been given free water on flights.

Posted by
33 posts

I just flew Norwegian from Gatwick to Boston three days ago, and our carryons were only weighed once (at check-in). I have no problem with that as I’m sick of people bringing gigantic carryons onboard flights. I do think that they could have sprung for some free water for those who didn’t purchase meals, but other than that, no complaints.