Re: airplane baggage

[mech <mech@m3ch.net>]

At 5:12 PM +0200 4/22/06, Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill wrote:
>  > Is this TRUE?? WTF?? What not in the cargo? Blimey, we used
>>  to go on tour with basses and guitars and racks and just pay
>>  a little excess baggage.. SO for me to play at a LoopStock on
>>  the west coast I would bring what? an edp and a Banjo??/
>
>As I have flown hundreds of upper-class limousines to another continent, 
>I'd
>say no, it's not true. But for playing Y2K6, I'll bring a laptop, a
>faderbox, an audio/MIDI interface and a foot controller and hope that
>someone has a keyboard and a string instrument to spare ;)

Yeah, it would probably be best to err on the side of caution.  The 
airlines have evidently decided very recently that charging for 
overweight and excess baggage can be a new revenue stream for them. 
And they've all pretty much fallen lockstep into the same pattern at 
pretty much the same time too, from what I've just seen.

Our whole family flew across the country out to Seattle last month. 
We figured it would be easier all around to have one larger bag for 
three people, rather than lots of smaller ones.  Our one large bag 
weighed in at ~65 pounds, and we got charged a fee at the airport for 
that single bag being overweight.  This was despite the fact that we 
could have been within our rights to take along three bags apiece, 
each weighing 50 pounds.  That would have been a total of 450 pounds 
in luggage.  It looked like several people were getting hit with 
this, though, and no amount of arguing could get the airline to waive 
the fee, either.

We flew Southwest (urgh!) this time, but a quick survey of the other 
airlines showed that they all seemed to be implementing similar 
charges as of March.

Oh, and in case you didn't catch it above, it looks like the max bag 
weight has now been lowered from 70 to 50 pounds per bag.  Another 
hidden charge with which air carriers can gouge their customers, so 
watch the weight on those racks.  :P

        --m.

-- 
_______
"Snakes, as the great philosophers used to say, on a motherfucking 
plane...."