Why bother with carry-on bags?

[clifford]

(almost done that twice whilst sipping champers in the lounge)

Real champers?

What lounge?

 

[Febs]

One week is child's play for carry on.

How do you go with shoes though? I have trouble with carry-on if I want to bring joggers, work shoes and casual shoes...two pairs of shoes tends to take up a large part of a domestic carry-on bag.

I find 3 days is the absolute limit for carry-on for me (if I plan to work out, and need joggers).

Also not a fan of having only 2-3 different shirts to last me a week or two. :-|

Cheers,
- Febs.

 

[spiggy_topes]

Shoes (and other footwear) are awkward if trying to travel light - I'm a size 12. These days I leave a pair of shoes and some climbing boots at my parents' place in Scotland. Quite often I'll use them elsewhere in the UK and post them back before continuing on to the US.

 

[dot]

How do you go with shoes though? I have trouble with carry-on if I want to bring joggers, work shoes and casual shoes...two pairs of shoes tends to take up a large part of a domestic carry-on bag.

I find 3 days is the absolute limit for carry-on for me (if I plan to work out, and need joggers).

Also not a fan of having only 2-3 different shirts to last me a week or two. :-|

Cheers,
- Febs.

Shoes are the most difficult thing when travelling with hang luggage only, but it can be done. For runners, I have a very light and flexible pair of jogging shoes from Asics - I can lay them upside down on the top of my bag (soles up) with the heal in a small gap along the edge of my carry-on. Other than that, I use the same shoes for casual and business (a pair of dress Blunstone boots). If you are not in the mood for exercise, you should be able to easily include a pair of thongs for poolside use (or casual walk around) when not working...

As for shirts, I will take 4-5 shirts (one casual, the rest for business) and depend on the Hotel laundry to keep me in clean shirts. Depending on hotel laundry can be very difficult if you are moving a lot (1-2 days in each location) since it may not give you enough time to get the laundry back before you need to check out - in those situations, I try to plan my clothes so that I will have enough for the longest stint without laundry access - which may mean checked luggage - I am not keen on doing my own laundry in the bathroom sink...

 

[simongr]

Real champers?

What lounge?

HKG and NRT - so real champers on both occasions.

Key advantage for me today with hand luggage only was the 10 mins from aircraft seat to car seat Bags not even xrayed

My hand luggage was weighed in MEL a couple of weeks ago when transiting SYD-MEL-HKG because I could not convince the chick I was flying in J :evil: The rollaboard weight in at a whopping 12.1KG - the suit bag was not weighed.

I am lucky with a lot of my travel to Asia/NY that I don't need suits and thus can wear chinos and deck shoes and still have a casual pair of shoes. As my running has not appeared to start I don't have the runners problem - can I suggest taking up swimming

 

[Febs]

I am lucky with a lot of my travel to Asia/NY that I don't need suits

I'm in the same situation for my US travel and it makes life so much easier. I'd never subject my suits to a suitcase, so travelling with suits always means (at least) two checked bags for me - my suitcase and a suit carrier.

It also means that when I'm in the US, my second bag can be golf gear that I've picked up cheap.

Cheers,
- Febs.

 

[Shano]

I also have never packed a suit when travelling, although this may change next month as I have been invited to a grand opening cermony of a factory in China. Typically is just chinos and polo shirts / business shirts.

I bought a pair of RM Williams boots a couple of years ago and typically this is the only footwear I take. My last trip I was spending a couple of days in a customer's factory, which meant PPE and size 12 steel capped safety shoes. This posed a bit of a packing challenge. As it turned out I had plenty of room for teh second half of the trip as my laundry did not make it back to the hotel before I left (and is yet to make its way to Melbourne despite repeated assurances that it is on its way )

 

[thegurio]

due to the nature of my work i need everything from suits to PPE which of course includes steel caps... I have found the easiest thing to do is wear them and then just undress when you get to X-ray. As i always take my essential bits of work gear with me (golf clubs) at least one item needs to be checked, however i just cant seem to get my luggage under the magic threshold so that i can carry it on - it always seems to be around the 12kg mark. But as the clubs are checked its not usually a big deal for me. I am really seriuosly thinking of getting new clubs and then leaving my current set onADL where i normally go.

 

[Shano]

I think that I can pretty safely say that my 22" rollaboard has never been under about 10 kg. I've just been fortunate that it has never been weighed.

My laptop backpack is typically around 6kg.

 

[pauly7]

What on earth are chinos?! Something from the 50 plus crowd I'm guessing

As an exercise I weighed my carry on (stuffed a laptop in this time as had left laptop bag at the office) and clocked 16kg. QFLink didn't blink as I dragged it on a Q400. Yay!

 

[serfty]

What on earth are chinos?! Something from the 50 plus crowd I'm guessing ...

For all you ever wanted to know about Chino's and flying but were afraid to ask, look from posts #177 - #177 & from #243 onwards in this sibling thread:

• http://www.frequentflyer.com.au/com...eat-hand-luggage-only-10900-5.html#post143435

 

[SeaWolf]

As an exercise I weighed my carry on (stuffed a laptop in this time as had left laptop bag at the office) and clocked 16kg. QFLink didn't blink as I dragged it on a Q400. Yay!

I've gotta ask, how large is this bag? I'm starting to wonder if perhaps I can get away with taking my usual luggage on board with me. It's a bit over the limits to size, but not by all that much.

Although I'll be the first to admit I get pissed off when I get on and find people attempting to stuff 'roll-aboards' into the overhead that are cleary designed to push at the limits of what is allowed as carry on.

 

[Evan]

The problem is with rollaaboard is they have wheels etc and sometimes these just make putting it in an overhead that much more difficult, a "soft" bag like a back pack of the same size always seems to fit better, becuase you can just squash it a little when required.

Also if you know exactly what planes your going to be flying on then you can get away with a lot more since you know they have huge bins.

E

 

[Arthur Hodgson]

As an exercise I weighed my carry on (stuffed a laptop in this time as had left laptop bag at the office) and clocked 16kg. QFLink didn't blink as I dragged it on a Q400. Yay!

This seems extremely selfish to me (part of the me me me crowd?).

Let's hope you meet the bag checkers at MEL or PER Intl one day.

BTW, how do you stow a 16Kg bag on a Crash-8? What's in it? Gold bars?

Have a nice day...

 

[pauly7]

This seems extremely selfish to me (part of the me me me crowd?).

Let's hope you meet the bag checkers at MEL or PER Intl one day.

BTW, how do you stow a 16Kg bag on a Crash-8? What's in it? Gold bars?

Have a nice day...

Easy, it goes under the seat infront of you on the Dash-8's... Not much fits into those overhead lockers! Hope this helps.

 

[simongr]

I've gotta ask, how large is this bag? I'm starting to wonder if perhaps I can get away with taking my usual luggage on board with me. It's a bit over the limits to size, but not by all that much.

Although I'll be the first to admit I get pissed off when I get on and find people attempting to stuff 'roll-aboards' into the overhead that are cleary designed to push at the limits of what is allowed as carry on.

I have a 20in rollaboard that when packed tightly and properly will clock 13KG but still be within the size limits. It fits end on into a an A330 QF overhead bin and even with my suit bag on top takes up less than half the bin above me - it s volume not weight that is the issue.

This seems extremely selfish to me (part of the me me me crowd?).

Let's hope you meet the bag checkers at MEL or PER Intl one day.

Just a tad spiteful surely? One bag irrespective of weight if within the size limits doesnt deprive other people of overhead space.

 

[Evan]

I have a 20in rollaboard that when packed tightly and properly will clock 13KG but still be within the size limits. It fits end on into a an A330 QF overhead bin and even with my suit bag on top takes up less than half the bin above me - it s volume not weight that is the issue.

Just a tad spiteful surely? One bag irrespective of weight if within the size limits doesnt deprive other people of overhead space.

I am going to agree 100% here, the weight may be an issue for the airlines, but for the passangers and managing to get there bags into a locker above them it comes down to the size. My carry on could weight 12 or 13kgs, as i have been weighed in MEL and PER a number of times and let though, (not so much as a warning about being lighter next time) but it is often much smaller than others and easily fits in lockers.

Some people bring bags on board that with maybe the exception of the American airlines are going to struggle to fit in any overhead bin on any aircraft, i am sure they are then tupid enought o do it next trip again.

E

 

[NM]

The problem with weight for carry-on bags is that the overhead lockers are certified for a particular maximum weight to ensure integrity under adverse conditions. Consider an overhead bin that is sized to hold say 3 x bags and has a certified weight limit of say 45kg.

Now if passengers insert 3 x 20kg bags into the bin, and the aircraft is involved in an incident such as the BA 777 that landed very hard and short at LHR recently, that 15kg over the certified weight limit may well become a problem due to the laws of physics as the aircraft's vertical motion is suddenly stopped by the impact with the ground and the mass of the items in the overhead bin want to continue to follow the laws of gravity and Isaac Newton.

I would not want to be the passenger on whose head the 60kg load is applied just prior to evacuating the aircraft.

The best place for over-weight carry-on bags is under the seat in front of you. If they manage to find their way onto someone's head from that position I expect they have more serious things to worry about than a bump on the noggin from a rogue bag.

 

[JohnK]

I feel more comfortable not having to carry anything with me especially in airports like BKK or SIN. I had a 4+ hour in transit in SIN so I do not want to carry any bags around. So I check my luggage most of the time. Possible change in strategy if doing any status runs in the future.

I have to say that on my recent flights my checked luggage has arrived at the carousel very quickly for both domestic and international flights.

In BKK a couple of weeks ago I was through immigration very quickly and waited no more 5 minutes for the luggage to appear on the carousel. In less than 45 minutes after disembarking I was sitting in the back of the limousine driving out of the Suvarnabhumi car park. In all this time I also purchased duty free and then exchanged some currency and went to family mart to buy top-up for Thai sim card and some alcohol for the 75 minute trip to hotel.

A couple of days ago returning from SIN the aircraft touched down in SYD just before 7:00am and I was home by 7:45am. I still cannot believe people say that SYD has problems. I was travelling BA premium economy so had to wait for business class passengers to disembark first and bought some duty free and walked though duty free lane where I was the next person to be processed. Walked down the stairs to carousel 11 and set duty free bag down and notice that my large bag is waiting for me and a minute or so later my other bag is also there. Off to quarantine express lane and no wait for bags to be scanned and in taxi within a few minutes for trip home.

By the way it would appear that there is still a dedicated duty free lane in SYD which is shared with express lane passengers. Also I had to ask the BA flight attendant for an express arrivals card. She was a little hesitant to give me one mentioning that they are only for business/first class passengers.

 

[Shano]

Also I had to ask the BA flight attendant for an express arrivals card. She was a little hesitant to give me one mentioning that they are only for business/first class passengers.

At least BA are doing this. My experience to date flying QF Y is that I have never received an express card. The only one I have received so far was on a HKG-SYD flight last month when I was sitting in the J cabin (courtesy of points UG). I still have the card as there were no queues at quarantine and was not required to have my carry-on only x-rayed.