I've just posted another reason to be careful with Emirates:

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=301664

G

I flew emirates when i went to UK for my Mums funeral in Feb and they were fantastic. I went with only hand baggage and as i weigh 8.5 stone someone else will have got my baggage allowance.

On the way back home to brissy i had the full 20kg plus 6 or 7 kg extra as I bought back quite a few of my Mums things that i didn't want to leave behind (plus a few big jars of marmite etc - requests from kids). The check in staff were great and just said "your bags are a little bit over but don't worry" - I did check in early though so if they were going to make any allowances it will be with those first in the queue. I was also prepared to pay for the excess if i had to.

I agree with JTL wholeheartedly - they should weigh your whole family, luggage included and your airline tickets should cost depending on that total weight!

I will definitely fly emirates again.

Donna

Another reason to be careful of Emirates is that they are associated with Chelsea :scared:

LOL - funniest thing I've read all day!

I used to work for Emirates until 3 years ago. Due to passengers ALWAYS turning up at check-in with overweight baggage they actually increased the Economy baggage allowance to 28KG. So that gave the check-in agents a bit more room for maneouvre as far as letting people off with excess baggage goes. Obviously this was never advertised as then people would have tried to get away with 30 or 35KG - such is human nature Maybe this has changed and they are back to their rigid 20KG - I dunno. But you do have your 5KG cabin allowance plus whatever you can carry on your person.

Getting away with excess baggage really is like most things in life - it's down to the person you're dealing with on the day. Also, if EK are using handling agents - for example in Manchester I think they use SeviceAir or someone else and I know for a fact that ServiceAir employees receive monthly bonuses related to excess baggage - as do most of the charter airline check-in staff so you're not going to find it easy to be let off the hook there I'm afraid.

I used to work for Serviceair - Circus Air is what they are known as at Gatwick...

A few years back we had an issue of using a local airline to get to heathrow which had a different allowance than the singaporean airlines. you would think they would keep it the same for multitrip people. Not sure if that was a blip.

Anyway, I wasnt flying it was the g/f at the time, They made her take stuff out of her hold luggage and fill up her hand luggage to 5kg (she amazingly just had a wee book and some make up in it) I have to ask why, its the same weight in the plane!