Baggage Weight Limits at BAA Airports

[CheshireTom 1,377]

BAA (LHR, GLA, LGW etc) introduced new baggage guidelines from 1 June. Aimed at minimizing the risk of injury to staff, all bags weighing more than 32 kg will have to be re-packed. Flights will not be held while this is being done. Any bags weighing more than 32 kg will NOT be accepted by any airline. Any bag over 23 kg will be required to be labelled as a ‘heavy’ and the actual weight shown clearly on the tag. Most airlines offer economy passengers 20 kg and business class 30 kg.

 

Seems like it will give the airlines good reason to impose "excess baggage" charges at the same time.

 

Tom

[nidnoyham 30]

Tom, this is a subject close to my heart, I campained for 15 years to get baggage weights reduced for safety. In other industries, manual labour has been reduced, bags of sand/cement now 25kg etc, mechanical diggers, lifts on building sites.

 

O.K. you may be checking in 2 bags at 64kg, fine if they are the exceptiion, now days they are the norm. If you are a baggage handler, you will brobably lift 450 bags a day thats 14400kg of 32kg bags if 25kg 11250 total. Try that for 5 days a week. At times in the transfer area when an Air India flight has arrived, we have had 200+ of these monsters piled 6ft high, it aint a pretty sight. The top of a baggage container is almost 7ft high from ground level, we like to put the smaller bags there, but often there are no small bags, its bloody hard work mate. My back, shoulder, wrist and finger joints have all taken a bashing, I suffer in the winter with them all.

 

What is most annoying is that most of the contents are just cheap curry powder, rice and foodstuff, the fuel to transport them is worth more. Our problem was that if the airlines made so much profit on exess baggage, the wheights would never be reduced.

 

Health and safety seem to have bypassed baggage handling for too long, it is a welcome step as far as I am concerned. Oh yes, in case your wondering on my last trip my 2 bags came to 28kg total.

[Duffabboy 0]

28 Kilo's Nidnoyham.

 

Bloody hell, how many rubbers does that work out to.

[Eneukman 1]

I thought that there had been a limit for some time on the maximum weight for any particular case.

 

What concerns me more as a passenger though is the weight of the bags taken into the cabin. I am sure that there is meant to be a limit of around 7 kilos for them but many bags are obviously well in excess of that. Someone could easily be killed if one of these heavier bags were to fall onto their head. Also, many of the bags are considerably bigger than the maximum dimensions that are supposed to be allowed. It would seem that some people are trying to avoid paying excess baggage by taking as much stuff as possible into the cabin.

 

Alan

[nidnoyham 30]

28 Kilo's Nidnoyham.

 

Bloody hell, how many rubbers does that work out to.

I can't remember exactly, you see there is the K.Y., Vibro, handcuffs, Viagra and a set of jump leads to attatch me to a 20 year old bloke. Sorry I can't be more specific

[Daveuk 28]

Going to LOS I usually have less than 15 kilos, whereas returning I have more. I am sometimes amused to see how much luggage some holiday travellers have. I was in the check-in queue last year and this guy was trying to hand over 51 kilos in 2 massive bags. He was giving the check-in agent a really hard time. She was trying to get it across to him that there was a limit to how much he was allowed. Some passengers seem to have more carry-on luggage than I have in total. I'm often one of the last aboard and when I locate my seat, the bins are usually crammed. In March I had to help a female cabin crew member by hoisting a bag into the bin which must have weighed 10 Kg. There seems to be some sort of contest as to who can get on-board the largest piece of carry-on luggage.

Flights to the third world seem to attract passengers with huge quantities of luggage, whereas travellers to Europe and North America have much less.

[Greg_B 306]

With you on this one, nidnoyham...I've been lifting those bags for 19 yrs and at times you wonder what in the HELL is in them...Ive seen many a back/shoulder injury and the person is never the same after surgery

 

Excess baggage charge should be a must for the airlines, it's a matter of safety and common sense. But, trying to get the general public to understand that is another problem. I've seen many things put in bags, but the psgr. who checked a suitcase full of sand from the beach was a real winner....

[torrenova 644]

Excess baggage charges are a complete rip off. Some fat fucker (120 kg) check in his 20kg luggage ok and then some 70kg guys gets charged for having 35kg. Fair when the fat fuckers pay more and are restricted to special seats.

[Greg_B 306]

If you only realized that what many a psgr. is putting in those bags to make them so heavy....

 

Many bags going to Asia, have items bought in there current country and then re-sold in the homeland {SGN}, it's actually freight, but they check the large bag/box and expect the Airlines to tolerate the weight. It's a matter of safety for the ramp agents and the airlines. All of us understand what a vacation is all about, but shipping your household items as baggage is not a privelage....

[nidnoyham 30]

Greg, know what you mean about freight as baggage. A wee list of thigs I have seen at LHR as baggage.

 

A complete trials motorcycle in 3 large nylon bags. A diving suit with compressor.

Part of a dockside crane. Room size carpets. Bags of roman coins from a shipwreck in the Med. Tables and chairs. Bags of musical christmas cards from India. Bags of ballbearings from Iran. Human organs. Boxes of snails the size of a fist. Dried fruitbats, many things I have forgoten, just as weird. One punter transferd rom Malaysia to Brazil on a regular basis with 2 Samsonites so heavy, we had to drag them. Got Customs to open 1, it had thousands of CD's in, bootleg copies for resale in Brazil, I think they were in packs of 1000 about 15 packs per case- no Des Oconnor though.

 

LH were one of the worst offenders, we had pieces up to 110kg from them, can't remember which station it was, but when I asked them what they were doing checking in things like that as baggage, they replied " Ve haff no maximum vheight for baggage at Lufthansa !" Bet his dad bombed our chip shop !

 

I got into trouble once for writing on 2 huge 45kg boxes from Pakistan; If this is baggage, my a*s* is a pumpkin. We made the women take the boxes to checkin to repack, unfortunately the Vice Chairman of Air Canada was doing a walk about with the Station Manager and saw the boxes, he wanted to know who wrote the comment, so questions were asked and for some reason my name came into the frame. I didn't deny it. Sod it I was right for fuck sake and they knew it.

Retired now, but the legacy of these huge wheights is still with me, thats why LOS in the winter is such a blessing.