Apparently American is revising its rules about bag sizes starting today, following United's lead.
https://www.thetravel.com/american-airlines-eliminates-boarding-gate-rule/
Peter Greenberg was ranting last night about how airlines force people to carryon because they charge for checked bags, and it's just physically impossible on the aircraft for everyone to bring a full size carryon.
Three thoughts: 1) Some airline linked credit cards provide one free checked bag. 2) Some airline linked credit cards give priority boarding which makes doing carry-on only much less stressful. So picking your credit card for traveling may mean picking based on useful perks rather than just "cash-back." 3) Some people try to game the system and will have too big a bag or more than a carryon and a personal item anyway, and we can't do anything about that, but it certainly affects the space for others.
So picking your credit card for traveling may mean picking based on
useful perks rather than just "cash-back.
I'm thinking exactly that right now. The airline of my choice has a new credit card that I'm thinking of upgrading to that gives me automatic silver status and zone 2 ( out of 9) boarding privileges. It'll cost me just $50/year more than I'm paying now.
A free checked bag? Nothing in life is free.
I would appreciate customer service more if they were more strict in enforcment of the bag sizes .... so I could fly on a cheap ticket, be last to board and still be confident that there would be room for my bag. However to be honest, in 30 years of flying cheap, and boarding in Group 9, I have never not found a place for my bag and I can only recall a few times when someone else could not find a place.
I get free checked bags on several airlines because of status/credit card etc.... I still carry on
Until recently SW had "free checked bags" for everyone, but every plane I was on they ran out of overhead space.
so it's not people being "forced carry on because they charge for checked bags" Sorry Peter LOL!
