MrsW

I’ve seen it all now. Travelling to BCN on a busy flight. Received text and email asking me to check baggage. 15 bags are taken at the gate but still there is insufficient space. One passenger crams his bag into the already full locker and forces the door shut. The door breaks and we are delayed while an engineer is called. Engineer can’t fix it, so the broken door is removed and all the bags are taken out. Further delay while the crew deal with the bags!

flatlander

... offload that pax with their bags...

gms

I've seen plenty of crew cramming bags in and then forcing the door to close. Sometimes even two crew members working together, each pushing the ends closed. They do seem quite robust and able to take a battering. Sounds like on this occasion it just had too much. But that's going to happen more and more due to BA's policies and their efforts to cram more seats into their planes.

cauchy

To be honest they should change 'hand baggage only' to 'checked baggage only' and be done with it.

awayIgo

pennineuk

I'm surprised the lockers don't break more often. Flying LHRMAN recently, sitting in 1D, I put my business rucksack sideways in the overhead. Mr and Mrs 1A and 1C then boarded and filled the overheads above them. With a further trolley bag left, Mr 1C takes it and carelessly tries to put it in with my rucksack, knocking my bag flat and it ending up behind his. He then pushes in the trolley bag and has several attempts trying to ram it all in, As this didn't work, he then tried to shut the locker, having several attempts at banging down the door with almighty force, which of course was no more successful than his previous attempts. Once Mr 1C had sat down, I simply retrieved by rucksack, turned it sideways and pushed it in. Not a word spoken by Mr 1C. I'm afraid some of our fellow travellers do not set a very good example.

LCY8737

thebigben

It's not a problem... unless it delays boarding or someone is smashing the contents of your bag to pieces.

BA isn't very good at proactively checking bags that may cause problems, and I wouldn't hold my breath.

Im a new user

Then allow essentials (such as medications) in the hand luggage on checked baggage only fares, but force people to check in everything else or pay for hand luggage.

SteveF

cauchy

But I'm never going to be in groups 1-3, as I buy on price, airport and schedule. Ryanair's £6 fee for priority boarding and guaranteed overhead space is a compelling offer for someone like me, and BA has no real equivalent to that.

omk298

This could be fixed very easily by getting rid of HBO as a concept - stop making people try to take the largest possible bags into the cabin.

Obviously that creates other problems with the airlines' accounts but there are always trade-offs.

OverTheHorizon

Well that's as maybe, but I'm just back from 3 weeks in SE Asia HBO and it was absolutely fine. Admittedly I am pretty low maintenance but even so...
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Richmond_Surrey

The issue also happens on long haul. On my last A380 flight I didn't show up at the start od the boarding and when I borded somewhere in the middle, there was no space at the back on upper deck. I mean, there was space, but only for small bags, as lockers as so small that even my camera bag wasn't fitting in it. All bigger lockers already taken. My both pieces of hand luggage had to travel 2 cabins away from me. I will remember not to book economy on A380. There was also some argument in other part of the plane, when cabin crew was telling passenger that she has to keep her bag under the seat because someone else's bigger bag has to be put in the locker. Obviously no one wants to keep anything under the seat in front of you on 12h flight, hence the argument.

South London Bon Viveur

The size of some of the carry-ons is ridiculous. Problem with trolleys is that they have to go overhead. I usually try and eep my bag with me under the seat in front- it's usually a rucksack type bag, so fits nicely, apart from when fully packed, in which case it's a bit more of a squeeze.

That way I don;t need to worry about scrambling on board first to secure locker space. It's for this reason the I try and avoid exit rows on SH.

Ba is not unique here. I've just done a few domestics in the USA on AA and all flights seemed to struggle. Moreover the crew were generally disinterested in assisting pax.

I recently flew KL from LHR and the gate agents at T4 were very pro-active in gate checking carry-ons. I was collared as well, and when I protested (politely of course) I was told "it's a very small plane" (not true- it was a 738). I was eventually only allowed to take mine on board after promising that I would fit it under the seat in front. Once on board, I noticed instantly that the lockers were all empty. So the gate agents were too efficient on this occasion.