my tip
 

since I never even like to check bags, i put all that neat, nifty souvenir stuff in a package and ship it home. you can find a post office almost anywhere in the world, box it yourself and ship it home on the slow boat if you want to be really cheap about it. guarantee its cheaper than checking an extra bag and if you pack it right no one is going to throw their back out. I've always had things arrive to my door within a week or two of mailing it from abroad. the post offices, passengers and the airlines will thank you.

This would neccesitate our now infamous poster actually spending a few $$$, then he wouldn't have enough money left over to pay the annual fee on the Centurion card he claims to carry. I'll bet he puts every business related expense on the card and gets reimbursed by his emplyer just so he can carry his beloved little piece of plastic. The increase in spending limits will weed out all the wanna be's like him. What a loser. :td:

i re-read his post and found this to be the best, better than sqeezing a penny til it squeals. 9/11 is/was not crap. but to a foreigner with a bad attitude, it may seem that way. i have found that when foreigners come here or when i go to europe. people are very anti american. but what seems to me is that they are more jealous than anything else. i enjoy not paying a HUGE tax on EVERYTHING. isnt that why this poster came over here, to avoid that vat tax AND not pay the extra for heavy bags. why not save even more money and not buy the ticket?

i heard on the radio the other day about a marathon runner in new york. correct me if im wrong please. that ran some of the marathon, then got in a taxi so she could win. all she hurt is her own ego when it came out, the OP OTOH is not hurting his wallet, or his ego only trying to inflate it. but the people who lift the heavy bags are hurting themselves.

There are two fatal flaws to your argument:

1. TSA is usually pretty strict about not letting you through security with more than 2 carryons.

2. The GA doesn't usually apologize; it's usually a very brusque, "sir, you'll have to gate check that." Even if they do preface that with "sorry" they don't really mean it.

Not even a union member would go to the emergency room with a hang nail thses days, copay or no copay. Have you been to one lately? Do you know how long you wait in the "emergency" room? Just because the ambulance drives real fast doesn't mean anyone inside moves particularly fast.

As for paying the charge for an overweight bag, I don't see how paying Delta a few bucks makes the plane any safer? If Joe pax lightens his wallet by a few coins is that supposed to make the plane fly better, even though DL loads the 100# bag on the plane? Are we to believe the ticket agent is going to communicate the weight overage to the pilot? C'mon!

Now, this guys' morals might be on vactaion, but I don't think anyone here is truly concerned about safety. If they are, its only the ones without a stitch of logic. My guess is you folks flying on your employer's dime want him to cough up some money to DL so your upgrades aren't jeopardized.

Its the law of large numbers. If one person takes an extra 30 lbs then no big deal but if everyone does it then there are problems.

Furthermore, it can be dangerous for bagagge handlers (No, I'm not a bagagge handler complaining about my job). Back when I was in college I worked at UPS loading trucks. Anything over 70 lbs was tagged and had to be handled by 2 people. Management would come down on you if you broke that rule because it lead to injuries which lead to lost work and workers comp claims. If you pick something up thinking its 40 lbs or so and it weighs 90 lbs the chances of hurting yourself are greatly increased.

Aside from all of this, and its been mentioned numerous times, rules are put in place for a reason. Fuel requirements are based partly on weight and fuel costs money. The airlines assume the average passenger weights XXX lbs and the average passenger takes XX lbs of lugagge therefore it costs the airlines an average of $XXX to fly that passenger from point A to point B on a given route. One reason for bagagge limits is cost and the airlines need to do everything they can to reduce costs or increase revenue because (almost) no one is making money in the airline industry.

Justifying this guys piss poor behavior is rediculous. :confused:

The sorry makes me feel bad enough, and i have never been stopped at security when I have more than 2 carryons, which is almost never :o, its actually really often, but anyways.. ive always had an elaborate apology and ive even had staff members trying to stuff the bags in the overhead bin when it obviously wouldnt fit..

Whether the apology is sincere or not is irrelevant... and unless you are a GA agent how would you know, some people (like me) sound sarcastic or inconsiderate but they really are sincere... some GA agents ARE nice and considerate :rolleyes:

Yes, they do. The agents tell the pilots how many bags are checked, and how many of those bags are heavy (meaning 50+ lbs.) The pilots use this info to calculate weight and balance for the aircraft.

This is from the NTSB's report on Air Midwest flight 5481:
"The dispatch release for flight 5481 showed that a maximum of 32 bags was allowed on the flight. One of the two ramp agents working flight 5481 stated, in a postaccident interview, that 23 bags had been checked and that 8 bags were carried on the airplane. The ramp agent stated that two of the checked bags were heavy, with an estimated weight of between 70 and 80 pounds. The ramp agent also stated that he told the captain that some of the bags were heavy, although they were not marked as such. According to the ramp agent, the captain indicated that the bags were fine because a child would be on board, which would allow for the extra baggage weight. The ramp agent estimated that the forward cargo compartment was about 98 percent full by volume."

Weight and balance was determined to be a contributing factor in that crash.

Easily fixed by the OP obtaining a pile of OVERWEIGHT tags for his luggage.

great idea! on some airline you might get extra miles for that: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...27/ixhome.html

:D

While I do not support the general sentiment of this post, I have to agree with
its conclusions. Compared to how generous North American connections are
when it comes to luggage allowance (2x70ln for non-status Y compared to
20kgs on most European and Asian carriers on intl. segments), I find it soundly
unfair to trick them when it comes to the luggage allowance.

For what concerns the OP, I agree with AlexisLe that it simply is fraud. It is
not a loophole. Simply not being caught and being prosecuted does not make
an action legal.
You surreptitiously steal a service from the carrier by doing so. Worse, you
create a potential hassle if not risk to the aircraft by changing its TOW or
weight distribution.
And to compare it to the body weight of pax is inappropriate as they are
statistically averaged out whereas smuggling luggage aboard always does
increase the weight.
Admittedly, that may not be your intention but the procedure is highly
fraudulent.

while I agree its fraud, I think most on this thread don't like it for some other reason. And just because you pay doesn't make it any lighter for the airline employee to lift. And sure, a pilot will inquire about the bags on an 8=passenger plane, but I really doubt they get this info for the large jets. I mean, do they weight the passengers?

They absolutely do get the info for large jets, especially when they are carrying a lot of cargo. My husband flies regularly on Philippine Airlines between LAX and Manila. If they are light on cargo and baggage, they can make it all the way to Manila without refueling in Honolulu. Imagine if numerous PAX were secretly dragging on 30 extra pounds per bag....

Absolutely.

Many years ago, I paid for a large part of my college education loading bags onto airplanes at JFK and LGA. The systems in place back then were not as sophisticated as today, but we counted every bag and noted how many "heavies" there were; all this got reported to the pilots.

In one case, this airline had a flight going from JFK to London, England. An earlier flight had a lot of misconnects, and there were some systemwide delays, so we had a LOT of bags to load. Being young and enthusiastic, we loaded all the bags for the original pax plus the bags for the on-plane misconnects PLUS the bags for the PAWOBs ("pax arriving without baggage") from the earlier flight. We reported the counts to the lead, who reported it to the gate and the pilot, and - after seeing how well we loaded that plane - we were told to UNLOAD some number of the bags to get under the weight limit.

The pax on the plane watching us unload were going bananas as they saw bags coming OFF the plane before it pulled out.

And yes, we heard jokes from the other ramp rats* about "No, you LOAD the plane BEFORE it LEAVES, and you UNLOAD the plane AFTER it ARRIVES" all summer long.

*For the PC crowd, please replace my use of the endearment term "ramp rats" with the more proper "dedicated and well-trained professional baggage handlers" in all.