skaven

This is odd to me. Every time we fly to China we leave with carry-on only. When we return we have completely full suit cases. Always declared the value and have never had them open them up.

slawecki

op is going to france, not from france.

no can keep track of weights at customs. i think they look for electronics and cameras.

GUWonder

For checked-in items that are not oversized/overweight/irregular/special handling items, is bag weight routinely stored in the PNRs by any airlines?

PNRs do get forwarded and checked by authorities in some countries, but that is not standard and routinely applied to all arriving passengers in most countries. In most EU countries' airports, customs checks don't involve a reliance upon the PNR data as much as flagging down passengers with multiple large suitcases originating outside of the EU (or a subset of EU countries).

u2fan

I can not speak for all carriers, but all bags should be weighed: if the bag is not heavy, nothing special is noted. If heavy, this is entered when printing the tag and is part of the PNR. The sole purpose of this is for weight and balance. Oversize, irregular... are all noted for reasons such as the extra space they take up, limited liability....

chemist661

At LAX, on my first return from SIN in 2002, Customs asked was how long was I gone? I told them I was in for SIN 3 days. I should have said I was gone from home for 5 days. I had 3 bags and I believe that may have been the reason that I got the secondary. They asked me how could I afford to travel. I said I had a rental property that gave me income every month greater than what the SIN trip cost. (this was in the day when LAX-SIN was less than $500. ). I also said my apt rent was <10% of my employment income so I had plenty of extra $ for travel. I bought a bag in SIN along with alot of gifts and was well under the $800 limit. I answered all their questions and had my local govt ID with me. I had another flight to catch to ONT but was able to make the flight.

After that trip, I responded that I was gone from home for 5 days for similar trips. Never any secondary after that.

fishferbrains

I currently reside in France and travel frequently to/from the US, China, Korea and often on a RTW ticket (about 20 trips/year). I have been stopped only once on a flight from Shanghai with a larger suitcase (but under weight limits) that was only scanned and never opened.

I've walked *into* France with boxes that were clearly American wine and fish, and aside from laughter ("why would you bring swill into France?") I've never been stopped.

Therefore my personal experience is that size/weight really doesn't have anything to do with it; but your departure location may (ie China). Remember that France is *very* sensitive to counterfeit goods and if you're caught with even "fun" counterfeits (like the worlds cheapest "rolez" watch) they'll throw the book at you "French style".

vincentinparis

I too always remove the "heavy" tags from my bags when I'm carrying a lot of stuff. It seems to work.

MatthewClement

I occasionally bring things home in cardboard boxes if I don't have a spare suitcase. On nearly every occasion, I get stopped at Swiss customs and asked what's in the box and how much I paid for it. They're always very friendly, but they never seem to miss a penny of duty if they can collect it...

Got caught returning from a trip recently -- had an item that cost about CHF380- packaged in a box, and had the receipts ready to go as I knew we would get stopped for secondary. My wife and I had planned to split the item over our duty-free allowance of CHF200- per person, so I was feeling quite smug.

...until the Customs guy told me that you can't split individual items. So we paid duty on the full 380.

Athena53

Can they do that? And what do they expect to learn from it? Even if the true answer is "I'm a mule for a drug-smuggling ring", anyone with laf a brain would have a plausible, innocuouc answer ready.