Qantas Carry-on Luggage Crackdown

Qantas is cracking down on passengers flouting its carry-on baggage limits, with increased spot checks at airports and a new campaign designed to prevent flight delays.

Qantas carry-on baggage limits

On domestic flights, the Qantas carry-on allowance is:

• One standard bag (e.g. a small wheelie bag) up to 10kg, or
• Two small bags with the total weight of both not exceeding 14kg (each piece must be under 10kg), or
• One small bag and one garment bag with the total weight of both not exceeding 14kg (each piece must be under 10kg).

In addition, passengers may bring on board one small personal item. This could be a purse, handbag, laptop, camera, reading material or duty-free goods. This personal item must go under the seat in front or in the seat pocket, not taking up space in the overhead bins.

The Qantas carry-on limits are reasonably generous, particularly when Virgin Australia and Jetstar both have a standard carry-on bag limit of 7kg. Despite this, a lot of passengers seem to be bringing on a lot more than this – even though Qantas offers free checked baggage.

As most frequent flyers know only too well, there’s only limited space on board to store carry-on bags – particularly on Qantas’ older Boeing 737-800s with smaller overhead lockers. When passengers bring on more bags than there is space for, some bags might need to be gate-checked. This significantly slows boarding and often delays the flight.

Spot checks at airports

Although Qantas does not generally enforce carry-on bag limits that strictly, staff have been randomly weighing carry-on luggage at boarding gates.

Qantas has cracked down on overweight hand luggage before. In 2018, it randomly selected flights where it would weigh every passenger’s carry-on baggage during boarding. Overweight bags needed to be checked in (free of charge) at the gate. While this annoyed some frequent flyers at the time who got caught out, and the staff unfortunately copped a lot of abuse from unhappy passengers, most AFF members agreed it was very reasonable.

In the past, Virgin Australia has also run its own spot checks on cabin baggage. Virgin even specifically targeted frequent flyers using the airline’s premium lounge entries.

If you’re checked and just slightly over, don’t forget that your laptop can be counted as a personal item. 😉

But if you have significantly more luggage than you’re allowed to carry on board, it’s best to check in your bag. This also frees up overhead locker space for other passengers.

Qantas’ “1 Up, 1 Down” campaign

Qantas has also recently launched a campaign encouraging frequent flyers to place their smaller carry-on bag under the seat in front, rather than putting two bags in the overhead lockers.

The “1 Up, 1 Down” signage can be spotted at airports around Australia, including at the exits of some Qantas Club lounges.

Already for many years, on particularly busy domestic flights, Qantas has been tagging smaller cabin bags at the gate with a notice to put the second bag under the seat in front.

Recent cabin baggage survey

A few months ago, Qantas also surveyed a large group of frequent flyers about their opinions on cabin baggage. According to Qantas, those customers:

• Want to travel with cabin baggage
• Want to see more enforcement of carry-on bag limits
• Want checked bags to arrive on the belt faster at the destination
• Like the 1 Up, 1 Down signage
• Find the option to gate-check bags helpful

Interestingly, Qantas acknowledges that one of the reasons some people don’t want to check in luggage is that they don’t trust the airline to deliver it quickly at the arrival airport. (There’s probably also a large handful of people who worry about the airline losing their bag altogether.)

Qantas gives every passenger at least one checked bag for free. So the reasons for passengers bringing too much luggage on board are different to in the United States, where passengers often have so much cabin baggage that it can take almost an hour to board a Boeing 737.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.