Misco60

It depends how you define a "delay". If I have to wait at the baggage carousel for my bag then that, to me, is a delay: I just want to be out of the airport and on my way home or wherever.

If my bag were guaranteed to be there waiting for me when I exit immigration then of course I'd check it in, every time.

skiaplg

I understand the frustration with all this, but I don’t think that removing the rollaboard from the HBO would help. One of the reasons people like myself avoid flying LCCs is the feeling of being nickel and dimed + the difficulty of comparing the actual cost of flying. I feel like there’s a few options BA has before resorting to unbundling the fares even more.

BA could see this as a way to provide an additional benefit to elites by offering a free checked bag on HBO fares (with perhaps a lower limit). I myself prefer to check luggage in but won’t spend the additional money on it anyways since I know on full flights I’ll be offered to check it in for free.

I also flew Air France recently and they had a very strict policy where if you were above a certain group number then they checked your carry-on luggage in the hold. There were no problems with bin space then.

South London Bon Viveur

I think charging for suitcases is not a good idea, and to be fair they seem pretty good at squeezing in the bags. I would be much more inclined to check stuff in if I thought I would see again promptly the other end- but I have no such confidence.

At least they seem to have changed the standard announcement from the usually inapposite "To help us get away on time" to "To help us get away as quickly as possible" .

BOH

Then you haven't tried it recently I would suggest? It is truly a doddle to compare, particularly with Easyjet when you select a base fare (which is underseat HBO only and no seat selection) and then you have the options to add a) a larger cabin bag with seat selection included, or b) add a checked-in-bag.

Their website is very clear and concise, highly logical and most importantly, in my 7 years of using them regularly (along with BA) their website has not crashed once, never randomly loses all bookings, nor does their OLCI randomly just become unavailable for long periods of time.

Why do you find this so difficult? A 10 year old could do it

13901

In the past 4-5 months I've flown on EasyJet, Ryanair, BA, BACF, Lufthansa, Air France and Brussels Airlines on short-haul.

With the exception of Air France, whose flight was very lightly loaded, the remainder were either full or with a healthy load, and there were many different approaches to baggage. One bag only, or one bag plus another small one, one bag plus one small item for some (e.g. the frequent fliers or priority boarders), or one plus one for all.

In my opinion none worked.

On LH and Brussels the one-plus-one rule for frequent fliers/businesspeople was next to pointless as half the plane was seemingly made of HONs or people with some sort of status/flying in business, so much so that when eventually I and all the other peasants were allowed on the lockers were filled with Hermes shopping bags. Had to stow my pitchfork under the seat in front of me, while my seatmate had to hold her hen in the lap. Not very practical.

On Ryanair and EZY it was a farce. A mixture of late inbounds and short turnround times meant that, for both airlines (on all 4 occasions I used them) we were basically shoved in. Again half the plane had apparently bought speedy boarding/priority, but eventually we all mixed in the same holding pens. Again plenty of people stowing both bags in the overhead lockers.

BA/BACF wasn't different at all. Actually, on my one BACF flight the crew complimented my seatmate and I for having been the only two of the whole plane who'd put their bags under the seat (has to be said we weren't flying together, just a case of great minds thinking alike or cannot-be-botheredness).

The few instances where baggage wasn't a headache were on Ryanair, thanks to the new Boeing Sky interiors, and on a LIS-LHR flight where the A320neo doing the honours had the newest Airbus bins that allowed bags to be stowed sideways. There was a bit of a need to educate people that bags needed to go sideways (most seemed to note the sign, but some needed extra convincing) but eventually we were done.

I've seen airlines trying everything. One bags, two bags, tag at the gate, tag to put under the seat, free hand baggage check-in... it's all largely pointless. As long as punctuality is the key driver, and as long as shops exist in the terminals, the only solution in my opinion is to have the larger bins everywhere.

ratechaser

Not that I'm a U2 fan (music or transport), but the way I've seen them do it is that they have a certain number of seats you can book that come with speedy boarding and overhead bag space. That's what happened when I booked a holiday for some younger family members last year - well they could slum it as far as I was concerned!

Anyway, it wasn't a case of being one of the first xx at the gate - they would prefer to get you to pay more for the guarantee of getting overhead space...

TheBigRat

exact thing has just happened on our LIS flight ….

MiraculousM

Ryanair are charging £10 a flight still though (london to eindhoven is regularly £10) so until BA start charging that little then they cant do this and honestly, the bag charges on Easyjet are why i dont fly with them anymore as they are charging £20 to take a bag on board. It goes back to the whole thing that they started charging for hold bags in the first place. They scrap that, and they wont have that problem as flights in Y are really no cheaper than they were before you could check a bag in at this point.

bafan

Exactly. Stop charging for hold bags and start charging for [large] cabin bags for the most basic fares, and the problem would be solved overnight.

daftboy

Aer Lingus - an airline in the IAG stable of course - seem to have moved to doing exactly this (I don't know how widespread it is, if it's restricted to certain types of fares, routes etc) so they will have plenty of data-points on this within the corporate group to base any decisions on...

corporate-wage-slave

And Vueling too. Aer Lingus' policy is weird - you can take your personal item on board on their cheapest fares, but the larger item must be checked. If you turn up at the gate with it then you have to pay a supplement to board it. HOWEVER if you have status with Aer Lingus or you have a connecting flight then you can take the bag with you. Moreover if you have status and try to check in that bag, then Aer Lingus is supposed to charge you for the privilege. Now I don't think that actually happens - I saw that real arguments about this on day2 of the change - but there again I don't think Aer Lingus routinely charges at the gate either since given this somewhat confused policy people can say "check-in told us not to check-in the bag".

I actually think this problem - which actually only affects a sub-set of flights - is difficult to resolve without BA increasing staffing at the gate OR effectively "punishing" regular flyers on an irregular frequency. The updated NEOs don't have a problem in this area either. Furthermore there is an element of it always being someone else's fault, which can't always be true.

MiraculousM

I was meant to get a vueling flight a while back to barcelona and this was my favourite thing about it. Unfortunately, i caught covid and couldnt go but the fact that i could check my bag in without paying and didnt have to "pay to carry on" was what made me buy the flight.

Bohinjska Bistrica

Agree RE easyJet and their bag prices. Their charges have almost eliminated my consideration of flying with them as BA from Heathrow is often cheaper than traipsing round to Gatwick. Have said it before, but if BA can get the Gatwick operation right they could really take a lot of business from easyJet. The only advantage easyjet really has now over BA is their schedule at LGW; genuinely do think they have shot themselves in the foot with their bag pricing.

skiaplg

I actually fly EasyJet regularly, although not by choice. I wouldn’t rate their UI so highly, the manage my booking is relatively stable but not at all modern.

I guess you’re right it’s not difficult but what it is is tedious for me to have to go from website to website to check the fares and what I’ll need. The route I routinely fly on for work has 4 different options (none BA) and it’s a waste of my time that I need to do a search on each website to see the cost for what I need given the cost of each add on varies by airline.

At least with non-LCC we have the benefit of being able to assume you get a personal item + hand luggage (and if it has to be in the hold because I bought a cheap fare, that’s fine).

edit: just to say the reading C-W-S’s info on Aer Lingus makes the policies on EasyJet seem sane by comparison…

HarryHolden68

The solution is more simple. Deliver hold bags to the belt in a reasonable time - 10 minutes for domestic, 30 minutes for international are timescales people will work with. In the past I have travelled from Scotland to Heathrow quicker than my bag travelled from gate A6 to belt 1. That is why I no longer check a bag into LHR.

If the delivery was consistently fast, the obsession of taking everything on board goes away.