Battle of the bags: How carry-on luggage became an all-out war

There's a certain level of zen that comes with boarding an airplane. The free-for-all may be stressful, but the chaos is also predictable. If you fly often enough, you can see from a mile away how the process is going to go — especially when it comes to the battle of the bags.

It typically starts with an unenthused agent issuing what seems like a far-too-early warning that overhead bin space is running out, causing a swarm of anxious passengers to crowd the gate in an attempt to ensure their bag travels with them. Some passengers voluntarily hand over their luggage for a gate check, begrudgingly strapping on that dreaded red tag, while others hold out, betting that there's more room on the plane than the staff is letting on. If they're right and they make it past the gate agent, all's well that ends well. For those that play it wrong, well, they're in for a kerfuffle — the last-ditch attempt to squeeze the bag in, the plea with a flight attendant to come up with a fix, and, ultimately, the decision to relent. The flight eventually takes off, often delayed, with everyone slightly more annoyed than they were 30 minutes ago.

The hubbub around luggage is the "single driver of boarding time," said Samuel Engel, a lecturer at Boston University's Questrom School of Business and a senior vice president at ICF, a consulting firm. "If you look at what is the constraint on boarding time, the element that really squeezes it is the overhead bins. It's not people finding their seats."

Given how recurrent this problem is, it seems like someone should have fixed it by now. But instead, the handling of carry-on luggage has become an inevitable pain point in flying. The airlines have made checking bags an unappealing proposition, given the cost and the risk of items being mishandled, meaning more people are trying to cram their possessions into increasingly packed planes. And while carriers try to squeeze every last dollar out of baggage, the rest of us are pitted against each other — passenger versus passenger, staff versus passenger, lenient gate agents versus strict flight attendants — which makes the flying experience just a little more miserable. Passengers have to take a "Jesus take the roller-bag wheels" approach to the situation.

A lot of people are flying nowadays. The Federal Aviation Administration handled 16.4 million flights in fiscal 2023, with an average of 2.9 million passengers flying in and out of US airports every day.

Planes are more crowded, too. The annual load factor, meaning the percentage of seats actually filled by a passenger, is over 80%. Department of Transportation data provided by Airlines for America, which represents major airlines in the US, indicates that on the average domestic US flight there are 106 passengers and 130 seats; that's a big jump from an average of 65 passengers and 92 seats in 2004. For international flights into and out of the US, there are 158 passengers and 194 seats, compared with just 111 passengers and 151 seats 20 years ago. Some of the increase is a result of bigger planes, but they're more packed, too. Engel said the American Airlines Boeing 737-800, for example, had 148 total seats upon delivery in 2000. By 2013, that number was 160. In 2024, it was 172.

"If you take a look at the same airplane 10 years ago today, it has more seats on it," said Bob Mann, an aviation analyst. "If you look at the percentage of seats occupied on average 10 years ago versus today, that percentage is higher. So more seats and a higher percentage occupied definitely means more people."

More people on a plane translates to more money for carriers. It reduces their cost per available seat mile, increasing efficiency and profitability. So airlines have reduced the sizes of bathrooms and galleys and even the space between seats to squeeze more flyers in, all in the name of maximizing the number of paying customers on board.

"The average aircraft density is up substantially," Engel said. "Even on the same plane, there's just more seats on the plane than there used to be."

All these passengers, of course, aren't flying empty-handed. They've got luggage, and a lot of them are trying to bring that luggage on board. The carry-on-bag problem is partly related to space and partly to economics. There often isn't enough room on planes to fit everyone's bags, because the planes weren't designed to handle them all in the first place. That's especially true as planes become more crowded and the mix of people flying leans more toward leisure than business. (You pack more for vacation than you do for a one-day business meeting.)

On top of all this, the incentives around bags are wacky — airlines have made checking a bag so undesirable that more people try to carry theirs on. The spark of the carry-on-bag conundrum dates back to 2008, when American Airlines became the first major US airline to start charging passengers to check a bag, thanks in part to skyrocketing oil prices. It was followed quickly by United Airlines. Sure, the budget carriers had done it first, but it was a big deal for the big guys to start charging, too.

"Jet fuel was increasing dramatically, and airlines were looking for ways to cover those higher costs without having to hike airfares, because they knew that if they raised airfares too much it would further dampen demand," said Henry Harteveldt, the president of Atmosphere Research Group, a travel industry consulting firm.

The move was followed by a proliferation of fees across the airline industry. Today, charges for checking bags and choosing seats are among the largest ancillary revenue generators for airlines. They make billions of dollars from checked-bag fees each year. But not every passenger is eager to hand over $50 to not have to worry about their suitcase until they reach their destination.

"If you are extremely price sensitive or on a very tight budget, or if you are a family traveling, all of that, you don't want to have to pay for a checked bag," Harteveldt said.

There are ways to avoid the fee if you have airline status or a special credit card, though many travelers aren't so fortunate. Beyond that, there are other reasons people aren't so jazzed about the idea of checking their bags. They don't want to wait to pick it up after the flight, they've got stuff in it they want to use midflight, and, perhaps most importantly, they don't trust the airline to get the bag to their destination.

"The more bags you handle, the more bags you lose. That's just math," Mann said. The airlines' economic motivations for charging for checked bags were understandable, he said, "but the real end-to-end consequences were not understood."

What this all adds up to is a persistent crisis at the gate. Smaller planes especially don't have enough space for everyone to store their bags in the overhead bins. There are, of course, the dreaded bin hogs — the guy who ignores the one-overhead-item-per-person rule and takes up an entire bin with his roller bag and backpack and giant coat while leaving his fellow passengers to duke it out over dwindling space. A flight attendant could argue with him (and sometimes does), but the ensuing battle holds boarding up more. Other small issues can add up to a large backup, such as flight attendants taking up some bin space for their own bags or passengers using less-than-perfect tactics to get their luggage in.

"People don't load the bags the optimal way either, so we're not actually maximizing the available space," said Gary Leff, who writes at View from the Wing, a website dedicated to flying and travel.

Gate agents are increasingly stretched thin and under pressure — their primary objective is to get the flight to depart the gate on time, and if there are too many delays they get dinged. So to avoid the bag drama on the plane, they start asking for people to gate check their bags almost as soon as the flight starts boarding. The result: angry passengers, not only because they don't want to check their bags but also because if they do relent, they often get on the flight and see there's plenty of space available.

"Gate agents aren't checking in with crew in real time over when bin space is actually full. And even if they did, that wouldn't give them the information they need," Leff said. "After all, full bins with passengers still on the jetbridge with carry-on bags would still mean having to bring bags off the aircraft to be gate checked. So gate agents require it long before overhead bins actually fill up."

To passengers, this can seem unfair and arbitrary. People can feel like they're being picked on by staffers who seem to select them at random to check their bags while others breeze by. Perhaps they're asked to fit their bag into a sizer that supposedly lines up with the bins on the plane, but they're convinced it's too small and not representative of the real thing. Or they've been sold luggage that's marketed as fitting the carry-on standard, only to discover that airline standards can vary or that their bag is on the larger side for the carrier they picked for that trip. Leff said bag sizers at gates are usually slightly larger than the published dimensions of what's allowed on the plane, but he added that "many carry-on bags are larger than the sizes they're advertised at."

It's worth mentioning that, as easy as it is to complain about US airlines, they are often more forgiving about luggage than foreign carriers. Generally, when European airlines tell you how much your carry-on can weigh, they mean it. US carriers can be a bit more random on the rules, which may or may not work out to a passenger's benefit. Also, I'm not addressing the issue of paid carry-ons here, which we'll leave for another day.

When I asked aviation analysts and consultants about solutions to the carry-on-bag dilemma, their responses were not super optimistic. On a positive note, airlines are adding bigger bins — United and Alaska have announced plans to increase bin space, which in theory should mean every passenger can bring on and store a standard roll-aboard suitcase. These tweaks won't address the aforementioned bin hogs, though. On a negative note, one of the main drivers of the problem — more and more passengers being fit onto planes — is not going away.

"Airlines are doing everything they can to cram as many seats on a plane to make as much money as they can," Harteveldt said.

Airlines could do more to get passengers to check their bags. Leff said Southwest, which allows for two free checked bags, avoids the carry-on drama more than other airlines. Other airlines could follow suit, though they may not be eager to give up that baggage-fee cash cow. Charges aside, if airlines were better at getting bags out faster — and reassuring passengers that their bags won't be lost — that might inspire some more checking, too. Some carriers are trying to put passengers' minds at ease by making it possible for them to track their bags as they travel.

Still, it seems like we're doomed to perpetually experience some level of chaos over baggage at the gate. So I asked the various aviation gurus I spoke with for their own approaches to carry-on luggage and for any tips or tricks.

Engel told me he packs light and gets on early. If he can get into an exit row, even better, because there are fewer seats and therefore more bin space. Leff employs a similar strategy, though he admitted that on one occasion he cheated the system. An agent asked him to tag his bag for gate check and leave it at the end of the jetbridge. He complied with the tagging, but he took the bag on the plane anyway. He acknowledged it would have been a problem if everyone did it, but they didn't, and the flight was already delayed anyway.

Harteveldt said sometimes he finds it's worth it just to pay to check the bag to avoid the bin-space stress. I confessed my personal workaround to him: I ask to check my bag the minute I get to the gate, regardless of whether it's been requested. The gate agent almost always says yes, and I get to skip the checked-bag fee. Harteveldt told me it's a "well-known hack" and described another "dirty little secret" I might want to use to adjust my approach: If you check your bag at the last minute, it's loaded at the last minute, meaning it has a better chance of being the first off the plane. "Not always, it's not guaranteed, but sometimes," he said.

It seems that the battle of the bags is here to stay. Passengers may not win the war, but they can at least come armed with a couple of tactics for the fight.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Read the original article on Business Insider