As if the demise of Clear wasn’t traumatic enough, now comes word that Congressman Lipinski (D-IL), apparently bored to tears during the Bears’ offseason, has decided to try to regulate carry on baggage size:
CARRY-ON BAGGAGE RESTRICTIONS- Such regulations shall require that each passenger may bring only one carry-on bag and one personal item, the dimensions of each, when loaded, shall not exceed 56 centimeters in length by 45 centimeters in height by 25 centimeters in width (rounded to 22 inches by 18 inches (17.75) by 10 inches (9.85)).
I know what you’re thinking – how sneaky of a Democrat to try to make a law using the metric system…
Cranky Flier had this a couple of weeks ago, but I thought it was a joke until I saw the article in the New York Times supporting it. How could this be a remotely decent idea?
Let’s think of something obvious: the amount of overhead space per person varies dramatically between planes and classes of service. A compliant bag under these regulations is going to run strait into the brick wall of geometry when someone tries to fit it on a puddle jumper. Meanwhile, Cathay Pacific’s first class gives each passenger his own wardrobe (it’s behind the TV). Each passenger on Singapore or BA or Air France gets his own overhead compartment in first (yes, except row 1 on the 747).
Furthermore, passengers differ dramatically in their strength, spatial reasoning, and experience on airplanes. It’s a bit silly to pretend that the loading process is identical for someone who can easily hoist his bag and understands the depth of the overhead and the novice who has to get to the metal detector before noticing that it is time to take his shoes off.
The air travel network is pretty flimsy. TSA has about all it can handle keeping folks from simply taking guns through security (I have my own theories about how to get weapons on planes, but I’ll try to leave those off the Internet). Checked bags get lost - it’s a bit unclear if the stat is 5 bags per thousand total passengers, which I suspect, or 5 bags per thousand passengers checking bags, which would reflect a much lower probability of loss.
Why not keep TSA’s mandate to trying to keep weapons off of planes and the airlines’ to trying to get from point A to point B on time; the passengers should probably be in charge of their own luggage supervision.
