Does anybody know how strict air canada are with the checked baggage size limit? Their web site specifies the maximum of length+width+height to be 158cm and our suitcases come to 162cm. From a bit of web research it seems most "large" suitcases are the same size as ours. Will they pull us up on this and charge us excess baggage or am I worrying unneccessarily?

I think an extra two inches won't hurt ! I suspect it's the weight issue that would cause any comments.

I came back with two suitcases last week that were marginally over weight, and one that was under - they said nothing. (It's surprising how much jaffa cakes and bisto weigh really ).

And since last year, they seemed to have stopped weighing hand luggage - there was some ferocious temporary swapping of items into kids bags last year Or maybe mine just did not look that interesting this time ....

They have special procedures for over-sized luggage anyway. I saw guys with massive orange hard cases which I presumed contained tools of a trade. They just ended up at a different desk for collection ...

I think there's some kind of wonky imperial/metric conversion going on, you could easily argue your 3cm difference I apparently lost 3cm in height on my citizenship card, I gave the figure in feet and inches and it appeared in cm, and 3cm less than I thought it should be

Definitely the weight that is more important for sure - something to do with health and safety and manual handling of heavy objects which I think stands at 30 or 32 kgs.

In Europe this has been in for the last few years as I remember going to Spain from the UK with a "double sized" case for me and Phil which had all of our clothes for a 2 week holiday.

Think we were at about 34kg and at checkin they made us shift the excess into the kids cases so that the "large" case was under the weight.

Gaynor
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Airlines still take heavy cases, with the 'Heavy' tag on it and now enforce the excess charge. It has more to do with the cost of carrying the extra weight than anything else. I guess if they tell us it's health and safety hoping we would be more understating. I guess a heavy bag cannot be thrown as far!

Aircraft have a maximum weight they can carry for any given flight, this includes fuel, people, their bags and cargo. The cargo bit makes the money, the more bags that are over weight and not charged for the less cargo revenue. Business and first get a higher baggage allowance.

Scheduled airlines tend to be a bit more relaxed within some limits, however they are tightening up now. The only way you'll find out is when you get to the check in.

Maybe it's the difference between using 1" = 2.5 cm and 1" = 2.54 cm?

The dimensions are there to show what can fit through on the standard baggage belts. People take skis and golf bags and just have to take them to a seperate area large enough to take "oversized" bags.
As long as you stick to weight limits you should be fine, 3cms is nothing to be worried about

So size really doesn't matter after all

You are better off asking this at http://flyertalk.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=375

Great, thanks for the link YYZlover. I think we are happy to take the chance with our suitcases having read the responses. Will post something up if it all goes TU but I doubt it will