EU’s extra free cabin bag will weigh on airline passengers
Establishing a single, standard take-off point for bag charges would be a clear win
Travelling light is a loaded term — for Europe’s flyers at least. Unlike US passengers who lug whatever they can through security to avoid a checked-bag charge, Europeans are used to measuring every centimetre and kilogramme of carry-on. Get it wrong, and risk additional fees of up to £60 at the gate. Now policymakers in Brussels want to help more travel without hand luggage charges, US-style. Well-meaning, maybe, but foolish.
European carriers have been charting a shaky path through various proposals designed to make flying less troublesome. Last month, EU member states agreed that one small bag — roughly the size of a commuter backpack or tote bag — should fly free, with airlines able to charge for extra ones. Yet soon after, the European parliament’s transport committee proposed a second free item weighing up to 7kg and sized, rather vaguely, up to 100cm. Both plans require parliamentary votes. Separately, five airlines, including Ryanair and easyJet, face potential fines of €179mn imposed by the Spanish government related to ancillary charges including for bags, currently pending an appeal.
Establishing a single, standard take-off point for bag charges would be a clear win. One industry group, representing most of Europe’s airlines, has already adopted the proposed free bag minimum — 40cm by 30cm by 15cm for those with a measuring tape to hand. As a result, notoriously miserly Ryanair, Europe’s biggest carrier by market value, is increasing its free bag size by 20 per cent.
Go further, though, and the benefits to passengers become less clear. Airlines calculate fuel needs to the nearest few kilos per flight. Multiply 7kg by the 235 passengers on a full easyJet A321 neo, and that’s an extra 1.6 tonnes to carry. It may only be 2 per cent of the aircraft’s total permitted take-off weight, but unless politicians believe an industry with a forecast worldwide net margin of about 4 per cent is going to absorb the costs, it’s safe to assume passengers will pay, somehow.
Everyone has a cabin baggage story, from the outrage felt when a fellow passenger gets away with flaunting the rules to the altercations and delays when the flaunters don’t succeed. Small wonder that one of the UK’s largest trade unions, Unite, this week called for standards to be applied to baggage rules and enforcement policies. Unite says its members bear the brunt when angry passengers are asked to pay up or miss their flight.
Investors in airlines are better placed to take this kind of hit than they have been for a while, since carriers’ shares are mostly flying high. Still, easyJet stock dropped 5 per cent on Thursday as rising fuel costs ate into its quarterly profit. Adding extra “free” bags — inevitably paid for by flyers indirectly — will only weigh the industry, and passengers, down.