TAM carryon limit
 

I asked this question on the airline forum, but unfortunatly did not receive any answers so I thought I'd try this forum.

Does anyone know how strict TAM is about their carryon limit? We are flying Sao Paulo to Rio and my husband's camera bag is usually over TAM's 11 lb allowance. Have you ever been questioned about your carryon on a domestic flight?

Just flew with them 2 months ago. They did not check the size or weigh the carryon luggage. I think you should be OK.

Same for me, I flew with them 4 times last year and didn't notice any weighing.

Franto and Susan7, thanks for the info. My husband will be thrilled that he won't have to worry about checking and losing his camera gear.

Tell him to say that are personal belongings or electronic devices and they will beg to to take it as carry on. They do not allow it otherwise. He can also say that they might have to pay for any damage in the equipment. If it is not HUGE, he should be fine.

Didn't have any problems with camera equipment on a recent TAM flight. We had a large backpack with camera and video equipment, a very large wooden mask, a small blowgun, a bag with assorted gifts and an Akubra. Well, security was concerned about the blow gun until we convinced them it was really a mobility device...

Took two TAM flights last year -- one domestic (Santarem-Manaus) and one international (Manaus-Caracas). My carry-on was quite heavy, two large Nikons, lots of lenses, two flash units, laptop -- and I had no problems.

KST
www.arovingvision.com

We traveled on TAM in July of 2009. On previous year's trips there was no question about carryon weight. This time they asked to weight our carryon, which had a lot of camera equipment. Having encountered this ridiculousness on British Airways, I put my camera stuff into a backpack which I stuff into the carryon. This lets me take out the backpack and let them weigh the now relatively empty carryon, as the pretense for weighing is to not overburden the overhead bins, and backpacks can fit under the seat. Doing the "taking out" before you get asked the question could work better than after.

The idea of saying that you have camera equipment might work with TAM but doesn't work in a lot of other countries where they will simply tell you that you are welcome not to fly if you don't want to obey their rules.

We had no problems flying TAM GRU to GIG in Sept 2009, but the plane was half empty. Both of our packs would have fit under the seat; fortunately we didn't need to put them there. rbgb, your experience is good to know since we are probably returning to Brazil later this year.

For what it's worth, it was only on our NYC - Sao Paulo leg that they asked about weight. There was no checking on the internal flights (which ended up being Rio to Brasilia, Brasilia to Cuiaba, and back). And there was no checking on the return flight from Rio to NYC.

That's a very good point rbgb, flight checks are often very different flying to and from the United States.