'In some ways, we're stuck between a rock and hard place, between the airline and airport security,'' said Reed Martin, a graduate student at MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass., who prefers not to check bags. ''Airlines are charging more for checked luggage while security is vastly limiting our ability to bring carry-ons.''
Carriers deny a connection between those two developments, saying the increase in bag fees has everything to do with revenues and nothing to do with security. ''Delta's increase in bag fees is a result of continued cost pressures on our business and not related to the heightened security measures put in place by the federal government,'' said Susan Chana Elliott, a Delta spokeswoman. Continental said its checked bag fee increase was a competitive match.
JetBlue doesn't charge for the first checked bag, only the second. Southwest does not charge for checked bags and has even built a marketing campaign around its no-fee policy. Travelers have taken note.
''The difference between Southwest and other airlines is striking,'' said George Merkle, a credit counseling executive from San Antonio who flies about once a month and prefers Southwest largely because of its no-fee policy. On a Southwest flight from Baltimore to San Antonio in November, he said, he and his wife were able to store their jackets into the overhead bins because there was so much room. He cited, by contrast, a recent Frontier Airlines flight where many passengers carried on their luggage to avoid the $20 fee to check a bag. ''Boarding seemed to drag on interminably,'' he said. ''People were dragging bags of many sizes on.''
The carry-on crunch has pitted passenger against passenger as the race for space ensues. Like many other fliers, Merkle has arrived at his seat only to find the bin space above it jammed with the bags of passengers who boarded before him and picked out bin space randomly as they headed toward the rear of the plane. To find a spot for his bag, he had to walk several rows back. ''On deplaning, I had to struggle against the flow,'' he said. ''No one had any mercy.''
Some experienced travelers know the system well enough that they have figured out which rows board first, and are booking seats accordingly just to get a spot for their bags. Luis Figarella, who flies monthly from Nashua, N.H., aims for just behind the emergency rows. On American, he said, that usually means you'll be in the group that boards first in coach. It gives you ''a fighting chance'' to find space for your bag, he said.
No one has felt the brunt of the checked bag fees more than flight attendants, who are often forced to police the overhead bins for bags too big to fit. ''The boarding process is a disaster these days because it seems people don't want to pay the fees to check their bags,'' said Corey Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants. This ultimately impacts safety, she said, because flight attendants spend an inordinate amount of time being baggage wranglers. With the recent fee hikes, she said, ''we expect that it will increase the carry-on issue even more.''
All of this is good news for at least one segment of the industry: luggage shippers. The number of bags booked by Luggage Forward, which offers shipping services under a variety of brands including Virtual Bellhop and Luggage Express, jumped 89 percent in the first 12 days of the year compared with the same period in 2009, as travelers ship their bags ahead of them and go without carry-ons.
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