Yesterday while dropping family off at Tours airport for a flight back to the UK, we stood chatting in the line, waiting to go through security. Practically everyone had opted to take 'hand luggage' rather than check-in a bag (no doubt due to the extra costs involved).
Ryanair has become very fierce of late. Each traveller is required not only to weigh their bag but to place it in the frame provided in order to verify that the permitted dimensions have not been exceeded.
This is where both a new competitiveness and a camaraderie emerges. Conversations between travellers strike up as they discuss whether or not the bag in front will or won't fit in the cage. And what's more, in a perverse way - you actually WANT their bag to fail, you are WILLING it to be too heavy, too bulky.
When someone's bag is refused and they are sent away with their tail between their legs to pay the hefty fine of 35 Euros to check it in - comments are passed between travellers - 'they should've weighed it before they left home', 'how ridiculous trying to take that one through', 'everyone knows the rules'.
To add insult to injury, when our time comes and our bag passes the test - we feel SMUG, yes smug that we were so canny, so organised. We got away with it, we wouldn't be so stupid would we?
When returning from a UK trip in October, we were caught out ourselves - not going through security but at the boarding gate at Stansted. A rather militant air stewardess was clearly taking great pleasure in asking everyone to post their hand luggage into the cage. Elegant ladies were stuffing their handbags, duty free purchases and umbrellas into their one permitted piece of luggage. We had a large squashy bag which was never going to make it. No problem though, a newly created payment desk had appeared just by the boarding gate to make our lives easy!
And so we paid up, muttering under our breaths that we should have checked at least one bag in beforehand. We won't make that mistake again - we'll just take even more pleasure in watching other people being turned back and feel even more smug that we got it right!
This is where both a new competitiveness and a camaraderie emerges. Conversations between travellers strike up as they discuss whether or not the bag in front will or won't fit in the cage. And what's more, in a perverse way - you actually WANT their bag to fail, you are WILLING it to be too heavy, too bulky.
When someone's bag is refused and they are sent away with their tail between their legs to pay the hefty fine of 35 Euros to check it in - comments are passed between travellers - 'they should've weighed it before they left home', 'how ridiculous trying to take that one through', 'everyone knows the rules'.
To add insult to injury, when our time comes and our bag passes the test - we feel SMUG, yes smug that we were so canny, so organised. We got away with it, we wouldn't be so stupid would we?
When returning from a UK trip in October, we were caught out ourselves - not going through security but at the boarding gate at Stansted. A rather militant air stewardess was clearly taking great pleasure in asking everyone to post their hand luggage into the cage. Elegant ladies were stuffing their handbags, duty free purchases and umbrellas into their one permitted piece of luggage. We had a large squashy bag which was never going to make it. No problem though, a newly created payment desk had appeared just by the boarding gate to make our lives easy!
And so we paid up, muttering under our breaths that we should have checked at least one bag in beforehand. We won't make that mistake again - we'll just take even more pleasure in watching other people being turned back and feel even more smug that we got it right!
