Baggage travels down a conveyer belt to be loaded on to a plane at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail
It's early evening, and I am at the gate at Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport waiting to board a flight to Halifax. The final leg of an already long day of travel.
A recorded message plays for the third time: "We may not be able to accommodate all carry-on [bags] on this flight. Passengers wishing to check their bags, please see the gate agent."
I hear, and dutifully ignore, this message. No, I do not "wish" to check my regulation-size roller bag.
Then, a gate agent interrupts me while I am on my cellphone dealing with a minor work emergency, asking, yet again, if I would like to check an item, for "free." She points suggestively at my bag.
Are you kidding me?
Five Air Canada flights in four days, and each time I am warned that the plane may not accommodate my carry-on.
It's bad enough that airlines now routinely charge passengers to check their luggage (or to get a bag of pretzels, for that matter).
But now they've crammed so many seats into their flying sausages that there isn't enough room for everyone's "free" regulation-size carry-on bags.
The drive for revenue in the thin-margin airline industry has reached a new cruising altitude of absurdity.
I can see where this is headed. And I have a Plan B.
Next time, I'll wear four layers of clothing and I'll shed one set for every day I'm on the road. So what if my inflated girth spills into seat A by the window because I'm so puffy? It's my right, damn it.
The ridiculous notion of charging for a single checked bag has created unwanted consequences. To avoid fees and to speed through crowded airports, passengers consciously choose to haul whatever they can on board, maxing out the overhead bins and slowing down the boarding process. This, presumably, leaves cargo holds with extra room.
The easy and simple answer is to stop charging passengers for the privilege of taking a change of clothes and an extra pair of shoes with them when they travel.
But that's all too rational, perhaps.
Few businesses in the world have the chutzpah to retroactively rescind a service that customers have already purchased.
Imagine if Netflix cut off streaming minutes before a movie's climatic end, citing a pixel shortage. Or, the barber who declares his scissors too blunt to cut the left side of your head. Maybe, the car wash shuts off the tap after covering your car with all that coloured soap because the customer in front of you used the last drop of water.
The airlines' woes are self-inflicted and entirely predictable.
It's Economics 101. Charge inflated prices for substandard inflight food and airports will fill the need by creating food emporiums. Set size limits on carry-on bags, and passengers will try to max the limit. Make people pay for checked luggage, and they'll haul more on-board.
Recently, I saw a family of five, including a toddler and an infant, each with their own carry-on roller bag.
Travellers are not idiots. People will do whatever the incentives suggest they should do. Economists call it rational choice theory. People make decisions by weighing the costs and benefits of different courses of action, based on their own wants and needs.
Airlines are living in a parallel universe if they think travellers will willingly lug their bag through check-in, security, and all the way to the gate, only to give it up, when doing so means an extra 20-30 minutes wait at the baggage carousel on arrival.
Here's an idea. Reward me to check my bag. Make it worth my while. Maybe I'll do it for that bag of pretzels I wasn't going to get. I've already carefully packed my belongings to comply with the restrictions posted on the airline's web site. I may even have purchased luggage specifically to meet those strict rules.
But don't patronize me by suggesting that the airline is under some sort of unexpected cabin space emergency – a problem I must now help fix by checking my bag.
And, please, don't sell me a service that may not be available.