Used to travel with just carry on, not we check our bags
 

We don't take more than we used to; in fact, the bags we check are carry on size. We just don't like to shlep from one gate to another to make our connections, lugging stuff. So, unlike those who are thrilled that they can now take only carry on bags, we have gone the opposite route! Anyone else?

Nope. As I just posted on another thread <<My main issue w/ checking luggage is that the current stats = 8 bags per 1,000 are lost. So on the average 777 w/ 300+ passengers and 1.5 bags checked per person -- 4 of those folks are going to arrive w/o their luggage.>>

Nope, I haved no problem "lugging" my 22" suitcase to a connecting flight. I can practically balance it on my head and run with it by now.

Not me. Lost luggage and lifting the biggies onto trains, etc. convinced us ages ago to stick with the carry-on method. Rolling the little bags (we now have the four-wheel spinners) from place to place is easy and exiting the plane and bypassing the luggage carousel is a nice bonus.

I generally check luggage and have never been a great fan of carry on only. I don't take large bags but they would generally exceed carry on size. The size of terminals is one reason and I feel the time waiting for luggage in the whole scheme of getting to an airport 2 hours before a flight, then the flight itself, is relatively minimal. That said, I have never lost luggage so may rethink if and when that happens!

Internationally we used to always check luggage but after losing luggage for five days two years ago, and not being able to catch a connecting flight the next year because luggage was checked, we'll be trying to carry on this year.

I take a carry on legal rollerboard, and a smaller daybag, and check the rolling bag. I've got the important stuff in the daybag, along with a couple of days change of clothing in case the checked bag gets lost. I've had some luggage lost (for 3 days on my very first European trip) and I still don't think it's worth the hassle to lug around that much stuff in the cabin.

I used to love to just take a carry-on. Oh how I hate the new liquid laws, which are pretty useless in my opinion. Now, I can't go the carry-on route anymore since the only brand of hair product that works on my crazy curly hair is over 3 oz or whatever ridiculous limit they have. I hope they revert back to the old laws soon.

I just cannot see how limiting liquids to 3-4 oz is saving any lives. If someone really wants to carry something dangerous on, they know the rules too and will find a way. I really feel like it's there simply to make people "feel safer", when in reality it doesn't really do anything besides make some of our lives harder by having to check in our luggage.

Yes. I know it's a rant :)

Also have curly hair and didn't know how I could live without my products, but when my luggage was lost for five days, I made a discovery. There are great products in Europe and it became an adventure to find them, especially in a tiny town on a weekend. It was also an adventure picking out underwear at the weekly market, guessing the size. Those are the experiences I remember the most and while a little traumatic at the time, now add to the lore of the trip.

I check at least one bag because that is the only way I can take my picnic knife with me.

not a chance.

I am so with you!! After schlepping a 22" carry-on through the endless corridors that are Dallas-Fort Worth Int'l Airport, I vowed that my back's health and my stress level just weren't worth it! Then I did it one more time: at small TF Green airport in Providence, RI, I carried my bag all the way to the gate, then out on the tarmac because the prop plane was too small to bring up to the gate - and also too small to bring my luggage onboard. (Would have been nice for them to tell me at the check-in counter...)

That was years and years ago, and I have checked my bags ever since. (Of course, I always bring back-up items in my carry-on, just in case something were to happen to my checked bag. But so far, so good!)

Absolutley with you. Hate the carry-on crowd, whom I suspect of harboring loathsome diseases. Idiotic concerns of lost luggage are akin to hopes of a lottery win -- in over 35 years of international travel I have yet to have a problem with lost luggage. You are more likely to be run over by a London cabby.

To Hell with them and their prissy little Rick Steve's concerns. Take back our airplanes!

I always carry-on when I can.
However, my next trip, to Thailand on Thai airlines, has a 15 lb max carry on limit.
No matter how hard I try, I don't think I can get under 15 lbs with the weight of the bag included.
So, this time I will check it. :-(

Hmm, Pausanias, you just brought to mind something that was simmering at the back of my brain: I wonder if there's a correlation between the carry-on crowd and the money-belt crew? Because I feel the same way about all the "what if" posts touting the benefits of sweaty, unnecessary money-belts as what you identified regarding the fear of lost luggage! :D

nope. i only take one carryon backpack. no matter how long my trip or how far. i love the freedom of not having to carry anything any time. i dont store it in the overhead, therefore not taking up anyone's precious space but my own.. and i always have a built in footrest. i'm a happy traveler!

money-belt?
isn't it like a smaller, more uncomfortable fanny-pack?
As a member of a carry on crowed
I love leaving the airport while the other guys are watching the bags dripping onto the carousel - one by one ..by..one. , going around... and ...around..

<Nope, I haved no problem "lugging" my 22" suitcase to a connecting flight. I can practically balance it on my head and run with it by now.>

Hilarious and so true for alot of us..

Also I would never risk checking luggage. I would rather wrestle with it than not have it.

It’s been a while since my last total carryon- and I am free!
After taking a flight when no one was allowed to bring on much more than a paperback and a purse, I am a convert. We were off that plane in no time. It was great.

Now I carry on a tote with a change of clothes and some basics and trust my 22" bag will be waiting for me.

During a long layover, I'm free to get some exercise by walking the airport without having to baby sit my bag.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the airlines started boarding people with carry on luggage in the back of the plane?

While they‘re hauling their heavy luggage from the bins, we who just bring a quickly accessible tote can clear out of there.

Count me in!! I travel with a 22-24" roller bag, but I check it in these days. Traveling solo, I hate to schlepp my stuff thru airports, bathrooms, airport shops and restaurants, on and off the plane.

There's stuff I want to check (shampoo and conditioner, nail scissors, books too heavy to carry and too bulky to put in the carry-on).

And there's stuff I want to carry (extra clothes, camera, anything I don't want to replace, precious purchases from the flea market or pottery, my growing bag of wires to charge phones, iPods, camera batteries).

So unless I'm going for just a couple days, I check and carry.

And I agree about the liquids rule, a huge inconvenience for no real added security.

I always check my luggage in. I don't really think there's such a massive risk that my bags will be lost. Once or twice (out of countless flights) I've had bags lost but they always turn up within 24 hours and have been delivered to my door.
The flight I take most often (Brussels to Edinburgh) uses a very small plane with such tiny overhead bins (hardly large enough for a day-pack) that there's no point me trying to avoid checking luggage.

Also, I do get kind of annoyed with people rolling those little suitcases behind them, as they often seem to forget that there might be somebody behind them. They are so busy looking ahead that they don't realise they've just rolled the thing over your feet or bashed it into your legs.

I fly a lot and always check in nowdays. I also try to get direct flights. I've only had a bag delayed once and it was only one of two bags on a flight with 2 stops.

I find that you are at biggest risk of having your luggage delayed during flights with layovers. Out of the last 3 times I traveled with a friend of mine, she had her luggage "lost" for over 24 hours twice, and on both flights they forgot to put the bag on the connecting flight (in one case they actually sent it to another country after they found it). Some people are just less lucky when it comes to luggage too :)

Thought you might be interested in this:

http://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/index.html
http://tinyurl.com/379spe

Pausanias "hates" people who carry on their bags and sees their concerns as "idiotic." My feelings are hurt! I harbor diseases, too?????

Why does the Fodors culture tolerate such language?

But you're just kidding, aren't you, Pausanias?

When you're bored you tend to tolerate a lot of things.

If the bloody airlines could just become efficient and have your baggage on the carousel within 15 minutes of landing, there would be no problem. But they don't think it's a big deal if you have to wait 45 minutes before the first bag comes rolling on the carousel and it always seems that my bags are among the last to arrive adding an hour to my trip.....this is inexcusable on the part of the airlines who just don't give a damn.

Decades ago my luggage was delayed 3 days when I went to Martinique. Nothing has happened since so I'm one who checks in.

I don't have a problem with those who do carry-on only as long as they don't act superior to those of us who choose not to.

We usually check in--we've never had a negative, life-altering experience as a result. Sometimes we carry on if there's a particular scheduling issue.

The only thing I really resent is when I am told that some person wants to put a 22 inch carry on in the overhead above my seat and would I mind putting my much smaller 1 carry on on the floor in front of me cutting down on my leg room. That is asinine.

>...If the bloody airlines could just become efficient and have your baggage on the carousel within 15 minutes of landing,<

The airports, not the airlines, are in charge of baggage handling.

((I))

I haven't found the baggage carrousel wait to be too bad in recent years - nothing like the agonizingly slow service it used to be.

The biggest problem is that the airports *never* seem to be able to label the carrousels correctly! Not in the USA, not France, not China (to name some of my more recent destinations)... So maybe the baggage wait doesn't seem too long to me because I spend half of that time trying to determine which is the correct carrousel! ;)

We're trying to figure out how to do carry-on for a month long trip. Reason? I don't want our checked-on bags to go astray, and we also have a short layover (with customs) and have to make an international connection. I don't want to be stressing at the carousel while the minutes tick by. (I promise not to harbor any funky diseases and I won't run over anyone's feet with my bag)

"only as long as they don't act superior"

??? how do people on your flight know who is doing what with their bags????

no - it is some on this forum who act "superior". (on both sides of the issue BTW)

I am in the carry-on camp, and every thread we get the same old mantra about "well if you are willing to wear the same dirty clothes over and over" or "bringing all these too big bags on board and hitting me in the head". I don't wear dirty clothes and I've never bopped anyone on the noggin.

On the other side - light packers can be just as snotty to the checked bag brigade.

"Rolling the little bags (we now have the four-wheel spinners) from place to place is easy and exiting the plane and bypassing the luggage carousel is a nice bonus.

True, unless you fly on a small regional plane and have to carry it up and down stairs to get into the terminals and then haul it (or run with it) to the other side of the airport where the "big" planes are to make your connecting flight.

SHAMPOO. I always use the same brands shampoo and conditioner and just pour it into 3oz plastic bottles. I always have enough to get through a two-three week trip. You can take as many liquids in 3 oz or less containers as will fit into the one-quart size bag.

well, I have been on both sides but changed to carry on eventually.
It was not fear of my begs getting lost
( it happened only several times in many years of traveling) ; I just could not face waiting for my luggage after 8, 10, 20
hours on the flight - jet lag and all.

We each have carry ons made by German company BREE. Expensive but light and flexible( don't even have wheels).

I have had my luggage lost 3 times and actually twice on one trip. I also have had zippers broken twice, a rip, handle bent, and a wheel broken off.
Now nobody touches my luggage but me. The only time I feel smug is as I roll past the carousel and am 1st in line for the cabs while 3/4 of the plane is camped out in front of an unmoving conveyer belt. : - )

I alway check. I can not understand why someone would want to carry their bag everywhere. I once had some Barbie looking person try to put her carry-on over me. The bag hit me in the head and fell on my arm on the way down. For the next few hours I swore it was broken from the severe pain. Ofcourse she had to get up every few hours to get something else out of the bag. One hour before landing she had to touch up her nails, put on make up, spray her hair and put on perfume. By the time I was off the plane I was sick to my stomach from all the fumes. I know her carry-on did not fit in that little box to limit the size of carry-on bags. After we land She gets up and takes forever waiting for someone to come by and get the bag back down. Holding up everyone else trying to get off the plane. Please have some consideration for the people sitting next to you.

Clea

If the airlines were to restrict even more the carry-on allowances (only necessities and a much smaller bag allowed), it would:
- alleviate the slowness at security
- improve security on planes
- speed loading and unloading of the planes

IMO you are more likely to be maimed by a falling carry-on during flight than to lose your luggage.

Q. Why does that guy with the huge back-pack turn around at least 5 times while walking down the aisle?

Some of the bags people carry are so big there is no way they are legitimate carry on size. But of course, no Fodors poster would bring one of those on the plane.