Re: Planespotting
 

I have long been surprised that the FAA doesn't require, for reasons of safety, airlines to take one checked bag for free, and to properly enforce the carry-on rules.

Re: Planespotting
 

:thumbup:.

Re: Planespotting
 

I didn't have to pay for checked bags as I have an Alaskan Airlines credit card. I get a free bag for each pax on a booking, plus cheaper 2nd bags. With Alaskan getting the bags to reclaim in under 20 minutes, by the time you've deplaned, gone to the rest room the bags are waiting when you get there.

Re: Planespotting
 

A plane will crash in my opinion because of excessive weight of carry ons. It's happened before with weight being averaged...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Midwest_Flight_5481

Re: Planespotting
 

Elsewhere in the world for that size plane on a scheduled commercial service they weigh everything. I assume it's some sort of civil liberty, invasion of privacy, ninety-nth amendment or something that stops it happening here. I've been weighed a couple of times with the carry-on bags not in the US. Only once weighed for a small 9-seater sightseeing trip in the US.

I've only once ever had my carry-on weighed for an international flight though. Roll-on (which I usually check anyway), B777 changing to an A380 at SIN on SQ, so not small planes. Anyway, at check-in it was over the weight limit, being something like 7.5kg instead of the 7kg permitted, and no other hand baggage or even a coat, was it really necessary to put it as hold baggage? Strictly speaking yes but the additional effort? She relented.

Re: Planespotting
 

All this talk of carry on bags is giving me nightmares about when I worked in terminal 3 at Heathrow and the VS to Lagos was flying out. I swear to god, those people used to travel with bloody car engines as carry on!!!!!!!

Re: Planespotting
 

Dunno about car engines, but I do know you can get an AWFUL LOT of Cadburys into those overheads. :nod: The trick is keeping a blank expression as the hernia pops out when you try to get the bag up there.

Re: Planespotting
 

Lagos airport was notorious for stuff going missing from the carousels, so people used to bring the most ridiculous amounts of hand baggage through, and although car engines were an exaggeration, car parts weren't. These bags used to be so big and densely packed that they would go through the x-ray and just show up as a solid black mass!!!

Re: Planespotting
 

Manilla passengers too, and Mexico City.

I worked for a Northwest Airlines feeder airline in California back in the late 90's and we flew 19 seater, needless to say, the evening flight to LAX had way way more bags then a 19 seater could handle, we had to have a van rented for that flight to drive the bags to LAX to make the flight to Manilla.

Passengers would travel with these large boxes all weighing exactly 75 pound (max weight for a checked bag at the time.)

And with a bunch of rope tired around the boxes.

At America West when working in Phoenix, we would during peak times have more bags then a 737 could handle, we would have both FWD and AFT bulked out and still at times have 2-3 bag carts left of bags, sometimes we would send an extra section, but most of the time we just sent them Fedex to get them to their destination since at that time we didn't have enough A320's or 757's to upgrade service for peak days.

Within the US Boston, Miami, and NY area airports have the worst packing habits, west coast flights had the least amount of baggage, weird in a way how different regions pack for their trips.

The only 2 things US airlines use exact weights on are mail and cargo, checked bags, passenger weights are estimated based on FAA estimates.

I spent most of my working career in San Diego and our longest flight was to Phoenix, so our flights were never anywhere close to being a max weight because so little fuel was on-board, so weight and balance was easy and not complicated except when using runway 9 but luckily that was not very often. Our flights only went out with 12-14k pounds of fuel most of the time.

Re: Planespotting
 

I don't fly enough to have special status and no credit card, so no free checked bags, so I will carry on and check if they offer it for free at the gate to avoid having to carry it on.

I won't pay to check it though so if they don't offer free checking at the gate, I carry on with me on the 737 segment, on the Dash segment it has to be checked but they check all carry on's free at the gate on those flights since only the smallest of bags will fit in the bins in the cabin.

Re: Planespotting
 

Cool video! :thumbup:

Re: Planespotting
 

Yeah, that's pretty cool. The airliners were always my favourite part of the air show when I used to go to Farnborough. Once you've seen a couple of military jets, they all start to look the same, but the year they had the 380 doing steep climbs and slow steep banks was great.

Re: Planespotting
 

Re: Planespotting
 

Those things are brilliant.

Re: Planespotting
 

One for the plane spotters. Seen at work today, a cool sabreliner 65.