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Time for me to say this again:
THE WEIGHT LIMIT ON LUGGAGE IS TO PROTECT BAGGAGE HANDLERS FROM INJURY. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TAKE OFF OR LANDING WEIGHT.
I appreciate that you’re clarifying with facts, in the social mediaverse that revolves around stubborn preconceptions.
Then why does a first class ticket come with a higher weight limit?
Because they wanna fleece you for every penny you have, but the point still stands that for the most part it’s to protect baggage handlers. If you wanna take a dead body on board you have to take that up with the airline.
So there’s a weight limit on how far handers throw the luggage around?
If you are there handling heavy items all day, you’re gonna get injured. That doesn’t just fuck up the workers (meaning they can’t go to work) but it costs the company money too (because they need to replace those handlers).
Think of it like this, you know how the X-Ray tech has to go into a little shielded room while you are getting X-Rayed, but you are still exposed to the full force of the X-Ray? That’s not because they care about their safety more than yours, it’s because one x-ray is fine (what your getting), but the x-ray tech does tens, maybe hundreds a day, and that builds up to radiation poisoning.
Now replace “X-Ray Radiation” with Repetitive Strain and back injuries" and “X-Ray” with the Suitcase full of Drugs your smuggling into the Netherlands, and you get the idea.
Yes. Can’t have them hurting themselves and causing delays because the airport won’t staff appropriately. Remember, safety is for controlling costs.
Then why can i book heavyweight with some airlines?
Incentivizing lower weights in some bags is helpful. Ninety 19 lbs bags and ten 35 lbs bags is easier on baggage handlers than a hundred 35 lbs bags
Because they can mark the luggage has heavyweight so the handlers can use equipment to load the items.
Team lift, you’re paying for a second guy to help load that.
Money
I had no idea, thank you
If that’s all it is, then just slap a bright red tag on the over weight bags to warn the handlers. Right?
Not quite.
You know how X-Ray Techs go into a little room to protect themselves while you get your x-ray? That’s because while you are only getting one (1) x-ray, maybe two (2), they have to do tens or hundreds a day, and the raditation levels from that can cause them harm, while you getting one or two x-rays is fine.
Now replace x-ray with your overweight bag filled with cheap Scotch you got from the Duty Free at EDI and “Radiation” with knee and back injuries from doing that over and over again for eight hours a day, and you can see why both the Unions and the Companies would object to unlimited baggage weight for passengers as workers will be out of work from injuries and companies will have to pay them compensation and find someone to replace them.
If individual passenger weight was enough to prevent take off, then very few people would be able to fly.
Now every single bag is overweight and they have to lift all of them all day. I suspect a few is ok but they really want to discourage too many of them so they are not lifting too many heavy weights all day.
I believe that after 50lbs it becomes a team lift and requires 2 people to lift the bag. Which 1 person can do but when hunched over in the belly of the plane it becomes harder and more likely to injure one’s back.
But the human is self loading cargo. The bag is not.
This is a dumb meme, for a few reasons.
Energy scarcity and our atmosphere could be helped by charging by the kilo gram. There are people who take it as an incentive to get as close as possible to the limit, increasing the weight of the loaded aircraft!
It isn’t about the weight of the aircraft but the person loading the luggage in the belly of the aircraft.
Can I get the exact same picture but with an obese fat woman and a sexy male athlete, please? Or would that be inappropriate?
“Any time you think it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.”
Mahatma GandhiNo, it’s about baggage handlers not wanting to have to load your heavy ass luggage when they have a whole planes worth to get to.
They’ll gladly take your overweight bag if you give them extra…money. The airlines don’t care about baggage handlers.
How is that logical that the man should pay extra cause he’s bigger/taller but small people should get extra luggage bonus?
Not even taking into account that this very short lady will be far more comfortable during the flight than the gentleman.
Its not logical - Weight limits aren’t there for the flight, they’re there so the luggage handlers don’t injure themselves
Weight limits are critical for the flight. An overweight plane can fail to take off. The more weight in passengers a plane carries, the more weight in fuel they need to add. This extra fuel weight also requires more fuel to carry it. And so on and so on.
There’s a tipping point with weight of passengers and cargo combined with flight duration where the plane becomes uneconomical to fly. Planes have crashed on takeoff because they were overweight but the weight was miscalculated. Temperature and weather also play a role.
Of course… What airline companies are most concerned about is the well being of their luggage handlers.
Even if they claim that this is one of the reasons, it’s a by product of cost management.
It’s because of safety standards. 50 pounds isn’t a set limit, but you can see how any decent lawyer can take that NIOSH model used and get a crapton of money from a company if an employee does get hurt lifting more, so conservative companies that don’t want to have to pay out will set that limit themselves.
Adding to that, people need to load all those suitcases in. The man doesn’t get carried into the plane.
The logic being that there is ~$0.82 USD per KG of fuel cost that has to be accounted for
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Tell ya what. Make it as easy for me to pop off a pound as it is for someone else to take a hair dryer out of their luggage and I will happily pay for all the extra boobs I bring on board after I remove the weight everywhere else.
Oh. Just you wait.
I don’t know why this keeps getting posted everywhere. Workers have a lift limit the extra cost is for the extra person to handle the bag.
Ah, but, who’s going to lift the passenger!
Passengers, while often stupid, are usually self loading.
Ooh, clever. TIL.
US vs Worker Rights
Thus, the meme
Ah! I didn’t think about that.
Really? Seems like it’s the first thing you should’ve thought about
Get a load of this guy, he’s so impressive, always thinking of the right thing, first thing.
I’d also suspect humans on a plane will follow a normal distribution in terms of weight. The aircraft weight/loading is done on an average sized person (which used to be 75kg if I remember correctly). Conversely every motherfucker will load their luggage with as much shit as possible if it’s not limited.
So how about allowing 2 bags instead?
Some airlines do allow two bags.
That’s still double the work.
Baggage handlers are not paid by the bag
Who gets the money for that extra work?
If baggage handlers were paid the extra bag fee people would be queuing round the airport to work there…
If the airport needs more baggage handlers on staff because there’s heavy 2 person luggage or just more luggage, they indirectly do get the money, because that’s how wages work.
Although I’m sure that the airline will pocket some of the fee, which is obviously not cool, but that’s capitalism for you.
Then what will they upcharge you for?
You want me to do TWO things?!
Man, I’d call my lawyer if dialing the phone wasn’t such a hassle.
Good point. Upvote rescinded!
Does the luggage handler receive the money then?
Well, if there’s two of them, yes?
Cabin bags have a weight limit too
Probably so they don’t kill anyone when they fall out of an overhead bin.
Cabin bags have a size limit, but I’ve never seen one weighed.
Yes, often around 10 kg. Depends on the airline I guess. Though I never saw them check.
Apparently a standard carry on is about 45 cm³, or 1.60 ft³. If you fill it with water, that would weigh about 45kg/100 lb.
That would be a lot of 100ml containers…
Carrion can be well over 1000kg and 5m… Depending om what type of animal we’re talking about.
Like an elephant?
Yeah, I like elephants
With barbecue sauce?
Depends on how shitty the company is. I’ve seen it a few times in a couple of decades of travel tbh
I always assumed they were weighed going through the scanner.
The scanner’s part of security, which is potentially shared between multiple airlines with multiple cabin bag weight limits, so it wouldn’t make sense as the place to weigh things. It only works if it’s done somewhere airline-specific, like check-in or boarding.
In all airports that I’ve been through (all in Europe), the scanners for people + their carry-on luggage are from the customs agency, so from the government. They won’t check or enforce any airline weight limits there. The airline may still ask to check the weight of carry-on luggage at the gate, but I’ve never seen it as an automated process, only as spot checks.
Hmm, perhaps. Good point, but I’ve flown enough that I should have seen someone flagged for overweight bags.
They don’t want anyone trying to smuggle all those neutron star packages
If I pay an extra €50 to go from 19kg to 23kg, does the worker get paid more?
Thought not.
No they pay 2 workers
So all suitcases between 19 and 23kg are loaded by 2 people at a time?
Bullshit. It’s a fake cost and everyone knows it.
Ok, I didn’t realize I was talking to an operations manager for an airline. I was just clarifying the point made above.
No problem. I think you’ve illustrated perfectly how easy it is for airlines to dupe their customers with additional fake charges.
No, I demonstrated reading other comments and synthesizing their text into an easier form for those without reading skills. I am not arguing remotely the same point as you are.
It’s always just one guy yeeting the bags even when there’s 2 of them they never share a bag lol. The extra money pays for the pink heavy tag they put on there that no one listens to.
You should report them. That’s a reportable incident.
Exactly. I can understand a maximum upper limit, but the cost bands below that are there only to maximise profits.
For a carry-on? Is that not what they are measuring in the image?
No, carry on is usally max 8 kg.
Thankfully some airlines just go with the “you need to be able to lift it into the overhead bin” approach source airline.
Nope. Why would you weigh a carry-on in the area with a conveyor belt? That is clearly the desk where you hand over the checked baggage.
OSHA.
The throwers have a union to stop them from killing themselves, which means we don’t give them 40kg things to break their backs regularly and anything over 22kgs they buddy lift or get a hoist or something.
Thought it was just airlines being airlines too, but this makes complete sense, don’t be dicks about other people’s health.
i was in favor of total weight based pricing, but this changed my mind.
may the backs of the people kicking around my luggage be in perfect health
Same, went from ‘you greedy mother-fuckers’ to ‘I am right with you fam’.
Amazed they don’t explain it more, it makes them actually seem human for once.
because airlines do not actually care about their workers and just comply with the regulations half assedly. they cannot fathom compassion for human resources or assume milking it would backfire.
I mean, airlines are people too, and among the most unionized industries.
They’re both soulless and actually human at the same time.
I’ve always assumed you pay extra because multiple people have to carry the bag around after you check it, and that’s harder/more dangerous at higher weights.
In warehouses, you gotta go get your lift belt and often a partner if something is over a certain weight, and you aren’t covered by workman’s comp if you just try to do it quickly without those, so it’s a serious hassle.
I always assumed it was more about the conveyors and such your bag goes through before even getting to those folks. Heavier bags mean more wear and tear and maintenance on those machines.
Honestly, it’s probably a little bit of both along with just deterring some cohort of people from bringing too much stuff because they don’t want to pay the fees.
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It’s weight on the plane that costs more. Takes more fuel.
The extra fuel cost doesn’t even remotely compare to the cost of an injured baggage handler and their lost wages.
Using that logic, the extra charge doesn’t come close to the cost of an injured baggage handler and their lost wages. If that was the reason, they would reject it outright or split it into multiple bags.
Nooo… They just assign multiple people or use equipment to lift heavy bags.
Do we really expect they do that for baggage handlers? When it’s 2 pounds over. Do they mark overweight bags with big hazard signs so the handlers know?
Yes, they do. If you’ve ever worked a physical job, there are safety procedures and regulations enforced by OSHA and unions. If it’s 2 pounds over, you go get a second person for the lift because if you decide to break procedure and then injure yourself, you’re not covered by the union and/or workman’s comp insurance. In some places it’s an automatic firing if you break safety procedure, and any manager forcing people to break procedure will be in deep shit.
Story time: I have a good friend who was a baggage handler and got stuck in a situation where their boss forced them to handle overweight baggage without a second person. She blew out her knee, has had multiple surguries, and has had to testify in court multiple times, including for a law suit that ended up giving her a sizable settlement check.
No no no not other jobs. This one job specifically: airplane baggage handler. And I’m not talking massively overweight bags which sounds like your friend, I’m talking the 1 and 2 pound overweight. Are they marked with massive hazard signs so everyone knows it’s 1 pound over.
Well, no employee is going to be expected to physically lift me and every other passenger at any point, but they will have to lift all of our checked baggage, so it feels like my weight matters less than my luggage’s weight.
I don’t want to “well actually” but I’m disabled and need to be pushed in my chair through the airport and to + down the gate corridor. Every time I arrive at the plane door, someone greets me from the plane and asks “do you need help (boarding the plane)”. Luckily I can hobble with my cane for short distances, so I don’t need to be carried like I’m going to the bedroom in a romcom, but they do have staff that can aid with that…
Now I’m imagining a plane full of disabled people all being carried. Boarding time, 11a, departure, 3p. 😋
Your imagination isn’t accounting for all the insanity that people loading themselves do. Loading might be faster for the carried folks.
That’s fair. Now I wonder how liability works with that since they could hurt themselves and you in the process. And surely they are people that just cannot be lifted by one person.
No matter what size you are, you can wear a jacket with as many pockets as you want. Travel cheaper by looking like an vaudeville ex-army doomsday prepper with all your underwear stuffed into pockets of oversized cargo pants, three layers of socks and an entire towel as a toga shirt over your other shirts.
Pro-tip: If you have a greasy paper bag they’ll think it’s food and won’t charge you for a carry-on.
Dude, I barely fit in the seats now with my phone in my pocket and you want me to carry a weeks worth of clothing and travel sized toiletries on my person?
There’s plenty of space on your shoulders and head.
falls asleep
suffocates on a gym sock
Weird kink but okay
Perfect death
Fly without a bag. At destination, purchase clothing. At end of week, return clothes for refund. No cost, no cleaning, no hassle!
I did this when I forgot a pair of shoes once. I felt so bad, but also so sly. The poor clerks probably have to deal with foot smell often, but it still just felt icky.
I did that once with camera gear. I stuffed lenses in all my pockets because my carry on bag was too heavy. “There, 5 kg off, happy ?”
I’m always cold when flying, so I just layer up. Jeans, sweatpants, short sleeve, long sleeve, sweater, jacket, hat. Then, I put various items in my various pockets. Phone, earbuds, snack bars, bar of soap, small articles of clothing, maybe a tshirt in my jacket pocket, a shoe in each sweatpants pocket. The rest goes in my carry on, no luggage fees.
You must be the person who’s always in front of me at the line for the security scanners!
They totally wont select you during security check either
