Where to get 'the jacket' to beat budget airline fees

annie_S_5

I work for Ryanair and on this I have to agree with my boss; the idea is not to rip off passengers but to change their behaviour. When we started charging for excess baggage at the gate about 2-3 years ago, it was only because people kept putting laptops, duty free bags (for safety reasons you should never ever put heavy bottles of alcohol in the hatbins anyway), handbags, coats and everything into the overhead bins so we, the crew ended up having to tag and offload 20-30 cabin bags into the hold causing us major delays. Delays cost more for an airline than any money they can take from these few last minute charges, which goes for paying the extra crew to deal with these at the gate anyway. I don't see any problems with these stuffed jackets unless you really taking it to an extreme and please do not put them in the hatbins or we will end up with the same problem. Someone wrote that they missed their flight trying to empty all these pockets at the security...You can take off the whole jacket and just put it in the tray to be scanned. You only have to empty your pockets if you keep your clothing on.

expat_mike

Thanks Martin, now some airlines will start weighing our jackets :mad:

I've been doing this for years with budget airlines and their weight restrictions but cavernous bags with deep pockets has allowed me to add at least 6-8 kilos to my carry on allowance. Whether this stunt will last I doubt it. If everyone does it, you can guarantee airlines like Ryanair will put a stop to it.

marklee

Wow. Just wow.

If you buy outside of the £10 sales, the conventional full service European airlines (BA, Air France, Lufthansa, KLM, Alitalia, Iberia, Cityjet, etc) are often no more than £10 a segment more expensive than the budget airlines, especially after you factor in the additional cost of getting to the budget airlines' airports. (e.g. by tube/train London Z1 - LHR = £2.40; London Z1 - LCY = £2.40; London Z1 - STN = £1.80 + £19.80)

For the sake of £10 or so, is it really worth jumping through all of these hurdles, buying additional specialised 'deep-pocket' clothing, spending additional time travelling to the airport, starting your holiday stressing about avoiding the extra charges and worrying about being caught out by a surprise surcharge? Even more so when you are travelling with professional equipment and are worried about airline treatment of it / have to justify yourself at the gate every time?

For sure, there are times when there is a significant saving when using a low-cost airline, and it may then be justified - but many times that I have flow in recent years, there has been such a small difference in price that it is simply not worth dealing with the added time, hassle and BS of airlines like Ryanair, simply for the saving of a few pound coins.

a6v

marklee wrote: »

Wow. Just wow.

If you buy outside of the £10 sales, the conventional full service European airlines (BA, Air France, Lufthansa, KLM, Alitalia, Iberia, Cityjet, etc) are often no more than £10 a segment more expensive than the budget airlines, especially after you factor in the additional cost of getting to the budget airlines' airports. (e.g. by tube/train London Z1 - LHR = £2.40; London Z1 - LCY = £2.40; London Z1 - STN = £1.80 + £19.80)

Well its more than just £10 at times. I've recently booked flights on Ryanair to Italy for the family that work out to be £170 each way and compared to other airlines this was about £120 cheaper each way so yes it does make sense to fly Ryanair sometimes and £240 saving is worth it. Again I might even "invest" a 100 quid out the 240 saved to buy a jacket that might allow me to save further on check in baggage in the long run.

Though admit that one should not take it too far and maybe just use the jacket for some of the stuff without trying to load 15 kilos in the pockets.

Another interesting idea might be to have a disposable wee bag in the jacket to save a few coins when the Ryanair toilets turn into a slot machine

flashnazia

I doubt any muslims (or muslim looking ppl) will get away with this!

alex223

Well maybe ok for a little while..and as others have said the attention has now been drawn to these very expensive vests..apart from that does anyone realise that the more people use these vests fully laden..it then adds weight to the aircraft which is dangerous as these planes then have to try and take off with undeclared extra weight..quess what will happen then...think about it!

rafter_2

The hand luggage allowance on Ryanair, Easyjet is already generous I believe, these jackets are just taking the p1ss, it's this type of behaviour that could see the end of the decent hand luggage limits we already have. I see them causeing longer delays going through security, no room in the overhead lockers as well

ads677

At the risk of stirring things up I have yet to understand why airlines don't impose a 'total weight for everything including the person' policy. If a child is charged the full price for a seat but only weighs, say, 30Kg why can't they have an increased allowance (and vice versa)?

System

They take off with undeclared weight anyway as the passengers are not weighed.

The weight calculations they make are no different if the anorexia anonymous club or fatties united club fly.

ads677

Exactly - so why are airlines so concerned about the weight of baggage (and charge exorbitant amounts for 'excess baggage'), but do not actually know/care about the weight of their passengers?