Who said I was rationalizing self-serving behavior? I acknowledged it was self serving -- I didn't want to haul the bags through the airport at either end of my journey. There's no rationalizing about it. But I stand by the notion that if they're going to be checking wheelie bags for free on each and every full flight because the cabin inevitably fills, they should go ahead and let folks who want to do so check them for free at the ticket counter and save everyone the work at the gate.

In point of fact, having just returned from this trip, it went down as Letitride3c predicted. I asked at the check-in counter in both directions, and was summarily declined (not a huge surprise). So I went to the gate in both directions, and politely asked if they expected to need volunteers to gate check roll-aboard bags. In both instances I was greeted with a smile, thanks, and a pair of checked bag tags. Inefficient, but so be it.