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Comment by alsetmusic | Hacker News Reader

So they’re gonna charge to bring a handbag? A backpack? A laptop? We’re living in the worst aspects of capitalism as it eats itself and any fake vague promise of a decent system is flying right out the window. It’s only going to keep getting worse and worse until we’re crushed by it.

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It conflicts me to do “the reddit thing” and say “please read the article” but no. Personal item is not a carry on bag in the eyes of the airline.

A backpack can be; it depends on whether it's your only item and whether it's small enough to fit under the seat.

A backpack or messenger bag are almost always treated as a personal item. The only time is if they're too large to be a personal item and get upgraded, or if you bring two items when they limit you to one personal item + one carry-on -- then they usually treat the smaller one as a personal item. It's generally safe to assume unless it's one of those 40L packs, it's a personal item, but check your airline's dimension and weight limits for personal items.

You could argue that it’s better to have to pay for things like bags, carryons or food as you use them. Problem is that they probably won’t lower prices from the current level so it’s basically shrinkflation.

You could also argue that it's better to have some minimum level of service that is useful.

That minimum level is to be flown to your destination.

Traveling with just a personal item is certainly useful to me and a lot of other people quite often. You can fit a laptop, charger and a few days' change of clothes in a backpack easily.

The first paragraph of the article mentions that handbags, laptops, etc are still allowed on this discount fare. It’s the rollers for the overhead bins that they’re talking about.

Yeah, I've been travelling a fair bit for work lately and I kind of get it. The majority of the flights I'm on are full and if they're not a Max 8 with the "rollers can sit vertically in the overhead bin" there's almost always a handful of people that have to gate check their carry-on. By offering an even lower fare class that doesn't allow carry-on at all, they eliminate the need to randomly choose/offer gate checking.

It's kind of a... you've made the bed and now you have to lay in it situation though. I usually have an underseat bag with my tech stuff in it and a (regulation-sized) Pelican case with clothes or tools or both. I bring the Pelican case onboard with me because both Air Canada and WestJet have done an atrocious job of having my checked bags arrive on time. They've gotten better in the last few months but earlier this year I was keeping a tally: Air Canada had successfully gotten my bags to my destination and back 3/9 times and WestJet 1/4 times. On one trip I flew out on Sunday, my bags arrived at the hotel on Wednesday, I flew home on Thursday, and my bags arrived back home on Monday. I don't want to drag that case through 3-4 airports, but I also want to have clean underwear when I go to work on Monday...

Come on, be reasonable. You can just wash your underwear in the hotel sink.

I literally did this last month when flying air canada.

It’s just unbundling, it’s not the end of the world, relax. Most “basic economy” is already like this.

This seems like a result of people buying primarily based on price via Kayak et al without seeing the full picture, and tools like Google flights have already started correcting for it by adding baggage into the all-in price that they display/sort by.

We should frankly make flying much more expensive than it is, it has an outsized effect on global warming.

It's only “unbundling” if the basic fare goes down by the carry-on cost. If the total ticket price goes up, it's called “gouging”. Hope that helps!

> If the total ticket price goes up, it's called “gouging”.

Or just rising with inflation. Or the business deciding to raise prices for their own internal reasons.

Do you consider it “gouging” every time a business decides to raise prices? What’s your definition of “gouging”, exactly?

Airlines are extremely low-profit commodity businesses. Most US carriers have low single-digit margins, and AC is high single digits. If unbundling allows them to lower the sticker price -- or avoid raising it because of e.g. inflation -- in what world is that "gouging?"

There's a subcategory of "every price change I don't like is gouging" but in reality, gouging is generally defined as raising prices to an unfair or unreasonable level in response to a shortage during a crisis.

You can consider that they might've had to raise the fare by that much to keep up with inflation/rising costs, but instead, they're keeping it constant. Like the sibling comments have already mentioned, it's an extremely competitive, extremely thin margin business, there is no way you can call what they're charging "gouging".

I don't love this change either, but we don't need to be hyperbolic about it.

If it fits under the seat in front of you you're fine. So things that used to be carry-ons like 20 years ago...

20 years ago when the industry-created problem of making checking a bag such a horrible choice didn't exist...

Carry on is not the same as personal item

Personal item != carry-on luggage

You might not like it, but “we’re living in the worst aspects of capitalism” is an exaggeration for needing to pay to bring a bag on a form of travel that used to be a luxury only for the very wealthy, and has seen explosive growth and huge increases in accessibility to the broader population in the last 30 years.

People used to joke about charging for a carry on. Yes it will come that you have to pay for the personal item/space under your feet is my prediction

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