This is part of Airplane Mode, a series on the business—and pleasure—of travel right now.
I’m going to say it very clearly here at the top: I love checking my luggage, and do it at just about every opportunity.
I understand why this is controversial and against the current grain of organized travel thinking. Baggage fees have ballooned, with most major airlines charging around $30 for your first bag and more for the second. Additionally, luggage companies have figured out how to make the biggest small suitcases ever, guaranteed to fit in the overhead compartment. And how about those packing cubes that everyone (i.e., my parents) swears will make your carry-on carry even more stuff?
This is not even to mention the risk factor with checked bags: Airlines lose luggage all the time; just recently my colleague told me her bags didn’t make it to San Antonio on a direct flight from Mexico City. Why? Who knows! And I have also had a fair share of baggage calamity. The worst was probably when my ex-husband and I took our then-9-month-old to Italy on vacation and our luggage didn’t make it on the plane in Heathrow; when we got to Rome and asked the inscrutable, smoking (yes, smoking!), mustachioed old man what to do, he said to “wait for the next flight from London—it will probably be on there.” We sat in the baggage claim for four hours drinking espresso and hoping our baby didn’t need a new diaper (they were packed!), but sure enough, it did arrive, which was actually a miracle given other things I’ve seen at the Rome Fiumicino airport.
Another time, my daughter and I checked bags for a flight that we boarded and sat on for hours on the tarmac and was then canceled. Getting our bags back took more than three hours, which in airport time is about a week.
So I get why you have probably given up on stowing your suitcase when you fly. Still, despite these and other mishaps, I always check my bag, unless it is an extremely short trip. You should too. Really! Here are some of the reasons why.
This makes me a better passenger on the plane. I am short and it is difficult for me to get any bag into the overhead bin. The chances of me dropping a suitcase are high, especially because I have a busted shoulder. Also: This means more space for you, my fellow flyer!
When you leave your baggage with someone else, you truly leave your baggage. You know what is beautiful and relaxing? Walking through the airport without your suitcase. Going to the bathroom without your suitcase. Wedging yourself into the bar for a preflight drink and burger and not having to shove your suitcase between stools. It is the closest thing to lightness and freedom in an environment engineered to annoy you. And if, like me, you are prone to losing even large objects outside of the home, bag-checking cuts down dramatically on anxiety.
You can bring a bag that is bigger than you need, just in case. Who knows what you might buy when you are away? Or, perhaps, what you may want to bring back from your childhood home? In my experience, a carry-on bag leaves no room for impulse or chance. A bigger, checked bag allows space for unknown and unforeseen surprises!
OK, I actually like the chaotic element of “will it or won’t it arrive.” This probably makes me sound like a real weirdo, but life has so few true moments of suspense. One can experience so many emotions while waiting for one’s luggage to arrive. Delight when it’s one of the first to come down the belt. Fear when it isn’t. Borderline anger when the wait is too long. Then pure relief and joy when the reunion comes. I like the camaraderie of waiting with other anxious folks, watching the jealous faces of the spurned. And then wrestling my bag off the belt before I’m swept down the way along with it, in a jumble of hard-shells and duffles.
But yes, I do understand the deflation, outrage, and panic when the bag never shows, and the headache of bureaucracy that follows. However, I can see an upside even in all that: patience. And the sweet relief that follows hours or days but hopefully not weeks later, when your bag is hand-delivered to your door at some odd hour, hopefully erasing the brief agony of being parted from gifts, souvenirs, and smuggled alcohol that you wouldn’t have had room for if you hadn’t checked that slightly-too-big bag.
