Gate agents and a flight attendant share valuable insights and tips that could help keep your carry-on close
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You’re at the gate, your flight is boarding, the overhead bin space is dwindling — then the gate agent’s announcement hits; everyone left must check their bags. Sometimes it’s an easy drop-your-bag-at-the-end-of-the-jet-bridge situation where you get it back immediately after the flight. Other times, you’re saying goodbye to that thing until the end of your journey, where you’ll reunite in baggage claim purgatory. Your goose is cooked … or is it? Is there any way to keep your bag? I checked in with gate agents and flight attendants.
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People like to bring their belongings on flights. Planes have a finite amount of overhead bin space (and airlines keep charging more for checking a bag). Put these together and you get travellers sweating at the gate. Will there be room for my precious cargo?
If you’re talking about a roller bag — which requires more dedicated space than a malleable duffel bag or backpack — the answer these days is maybe. Unless you’re among the first passengers to board, it’s often luck of the draw.
Shauntia Bloomfield, who’s been a gate agent at Charlotte Douglas International Airport for seven years, told me space availability varies; you never know how many people will bring roller bags. One packed flight’s overhead bin space may fill up within the first few boarding groups, while another’s never runs out.
Then there are the older airplanes that simply weren’t built to fit roller bags in the first place; everyone must check — usually for a quick jet-bridge drop vs. a trip to the baggage carousel.
Bloomfield said people yell at her on a regular basis no matter what reason she has to check their bag. She understands their frustration and prefers keeping her carry-on with her inflight.
But gate agents have a job to do: get passengers on the plane quickly, safely and according to schedule. If the plane leaves late, some gate agents can be penalized. Flight attendants, who are often unpaid, or paid at a fraction of their hourly rate, during boarding also have an incentive to get luggage sorted quickly.
“I’m shutting the door at a certain time,” said Deborah Perkins, a flight attendant in Salt Lake City who’s been flying for 36 years. “It’s my job to make sure that that gets done.”
Letting too many (or too large) suitcases on board only for passengers to discover that there’s no room and they have to gate check would be a massive time suck. So airlines came up with systems to keep things moving.
As agents check in customers, they count the number of roller bags passing through. Flight attendants can send updates about overhead space. The crew knows how many bags should fit on each type of aircraft, although it’s not a perfect science. Some roller bags are smaller than others, and some people shove extra stuff in the overhead bins, including bulky coats and shopping bags.
Once a flight reaches the determined maximum number of roller bags during boarding, “we start checking regardless,” said a gate agent in Colorado with nearly 30 years of experience who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his job. “We don’t have the luxury of time to know if [there will] be room or not when someone crosses the jet bridge onto an airplane.”
He also said it can depend on the experience of the gate agent to do the math. While he’s had almost three decades of assessing bin space, he has colleagues who’ve been on the job for six weeks.
“There’s a universe of difference between us,” he said.
Bloomfield, the Charlotte gate agent, said some planes have systems that tell employees when to cut off roller bags, regardless of feedback from flight crew.
“The system goes off of the group number,” she said. “So once you get to group seven, it automatically says, okay, the bins are full.”
As a result, sometimes planes end up with some empty overhead bin space and angry passengers. This is not the crew’s dream.
“Gate checking slows down a boarding process,” the Colorado agent said. “Even if everyone complies. And that never happens.”
Perkins said something similar.
“A physical human has got to take that bag and take it to the back of the plane, and someone has to load it, and that takes time,” she said.
Bloomfield says you can explain your situation (nicely!) and see if there’s a solution. If you’re travelling with something valuable like your wedding dress, maybe they can stash it in the crew luggage storage area if there’s space. Bloomfield isn’t there to make your day worse. She remembered a recent time when a woman was upset over a gate check.
“She said, ‘Do you even care?’ and I said, ‘I absolutely do, and I’m so sorry,’” Bloomfield said. “I really do.”
If you really don’t want to lose your bag, consider ditching the roller bag for a backpack or duffel, which aren’t factored in those automatic counts and may slip through.