THE BAGGAGE HANDLING CONUNDRUM

The subject is as old as air travel. Since its inception, it has been confronted with carrying luggage for at least two reasons: first, it has to be handled and it makes the aircraft heavier. Weight is the enemy of air transport. What may have seemed anecdotal in the past has become a real headache following the prodigious increase in the number of passengers.

Let us first recognize that this is not a simple matter. It is quite normal for passengers to carry some luggage with them, especially when it comes to personal travel or long-haul flights. The increase in traffic has led to a number of inconveniences and to begin with, the lengthening of queues at airports, in particular at check-in counters and screening inspection posts, the famous PIFs which have disrupted the fluidity of airport circuits, probably for a long time to come. So customers who are exasperated by this additional constraint try to escape it by trying to put their suitcases in the cabin. Of course, the latter are calibrated, but manufacturers and luggage sellers have solved, in part, the matter with wheeled suitcases whose dimensions are compatible with airline regulations.

The widespread use of cabin baggage also goes hand in hand with the desire to avoid the sometimes unbearable delays of delivering suitcases at the arrival of flights. Despite a great deal of investment, very large airports still face the difficulty of unloading planes and transferring baggage to the conveyor belts at arrivals. The wait can reach up to more than an hour. And then there is always the fear of losing luggage and even if it is around 3%, the worry is always present every time the passenger checks in his suitcase.

These are some of the reasons why customers avoid checking their baggage, especially since they are perfectly capable of receiving their boarding pass directly on their phone, which avoids a detour to the check-in counters. There are still the"drop luggage" but the queue is sometimes impressive in front of this new facility. So you might as well try to take your luggage in the cabin.

This is where two phenomena come into play. First of all, the densification of the devices. Airlines, under the pressure of the "ow-cost" model and new technological advances, have shown great imagination to put more passengers in the same space. It should be remembered that Ryanair had even looked at the possibility of making customers travel in a position close to vertical. Enough was enough, we had to give it up. However, the luggage racks are necessarily limited by the size of the aircraft and they are not infinitely expandable, even if, on the latest models, they are larger than before. The second phenomenon is what must be called the incivility of passengers, or at least of some of them. For example, many of those who sit towards the back of the plane put their luggage in the first available racks, i.e. towards the front of the aircraft, because they will be sure to find space and retrieve their suitcase when they disembark. So customers who have very often paid much more to be seated in the front no longer have space to put their luggage above their seat. They are then forced to put them much further at the bottom of the aircraft, which greatly disrupts boarding and disembarking.

In short, this is a situation that seems to have been unresolved for decades. So in order to try to find one, carriers are trying to regulate them through tariffs. Oh, of course, it is not yet a question of putting an end to the annoying habit of displaying the lowest possible prices even if it concerns only a very small number of seats, but of regulating flows by directing customers towards practices that are more compatible with the complexity of air transport. For example, the possibility of charging for cabin baggage now is likely to become more widespread, so as to encourage passengers to use airport facilities and thus facilitate boarding and disembarking from increasingly crowded flights.

There is no miracle solution, except to go back to much less dense cabin configurations, but then we will have to accept that prices will become significantly more expensive.

That's an interesting puzzle.