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If the airlines were smart, they'd consider doing away with the overhead bins altogether. Those bins create a tragedy of the commons. Bring a small backpack to
by solatic 7y ago
If the airlines were smart, they'd consider doing away with the overhead bins altogether. Those bins create a tragedy of the commons.
Bring a small backpack to be put under your seat that can carry your passport, laptop, headphones, a book to read, etc., or nothing at all. Check the rest. If the airlines do away with the overhead bins, then the first checked bag should be free. If it takes too long to get the bags on a carousel one-by-one, consider taking a leaf from the shipping industry and figure out some kind of containerization system for passenger aircraft whereby suitcases are loaded into containers before the aircraft gets to the gate, and the containers are unloaded at the destination.
Caveat: I'm not a business traveler. But, if you travel for business so often that you have status, then your checked bags are priority-marked and they're the first ones on the carousel anyway. As a guy who most often travels internationally and thus gets a free checked bag, even without status I never seem to need to wait more than 5-10 minutes for my bag, even on international flights where most travelers are checking bags.
- lsllc 7y agoSince they started charging for checked bags, now everyone tries to carry on as much as they can which results in slow boarding and getting off. They should be charging for overhead bin use and make checked bags be free (along with small bags under the seat in front of you). This way most people would go back to checking bags and only the business people or people willing to pay would carry-on. With planes being so overbooked these days I often carry my bag through security (which slows that down!) but then gate check it for free (so the airline is now losing the revenue).
- dpark 7y ago> They should be charging for overhead bin use Several airlines (and some of the lowest cost tickets for bigger airlines) do charge for this. But of course they don't make checked bags free.
- solatic 7y agoThe compromise position is probably to only have overhead bin space in premium cabins, then the price of overhead bin space is folded into the premium ticket. Good point that carry-on bags probably also slows down security, and the amount that it slows security down is probably not negligible. Without carry-on suitcases, you could probably completely do away with the X-ray machines (hand-check people's purses and backpacks), which are (anecdotally) probably the biggest bottleneck at airport security.
- zamadatix 7y agoOverhead luggage provides relatively high space efficiency in space that can't really be used for much else. I'm also not sold that idealized deplaning with overhead luggage would be any slower than deplaning with idealized bag retrieval.