Carrying On About Carry-On Baggage

Intellectual Capital , June 18, 1998

It won't surprise any frequent flyer to learn that the Latin word for "baggage" is impedimenta. Dragging your belongings with you on long journeys has been a hassle since Julius Caesar was crossing the Rubicon.

At least Roman soldiers weren't likely to discover that the mule train containing their must-have supplies for the next day's battle had been inadvertently diverted from Gaul to Egypt--with deepest apologies from the impedimenta handlers, of course.

Fearing such fates, today's savvy travelers will do just about anything to avoid checking their bags. I myself have been known to carry two weeks' worth of clothes, books, file folders, and computer equipment on my not-very-muscular shoulders, rather than risk landing in a distant city with nothing to wear but my jeans and sneakers.

Checking luggage adds a frustrating half hour or more on each end of the trip. First you wait in the world's slowest line to turn over your precious cargo; then you watch bags plop mysteriously onto a conveyor belt from the depths of who knows where, anxiously hoping that yours will be among them. I'll take a literal pain in the neck over that figurative one any day.

Luggage makers understand that travelers want more control over their possessions--and they've been delivering innovation after innovation. Ingenious designers have put all sorts of bags on wheels, and garment bags have gotten more capacious.

All of which deeply concerns our representatives in Congress. Ever on the lookout for new crises to address, they've mounted a crusade against carry-on bags. Those luggage innovations, they claim, are encouraging far too many people to cram far too much stuff in the overhead bins.

Rep. William Lipinski (D-Ill.) has introduced a bill, H.R. 3064, the "Carry-on Baggage Reduction Act of 1997," that would make it illegal to board an airplane with more than one carry-on bag. The House Aviation Subcommittee held hearings on it last week. Not surprisingly, no representatives of the traveling public were included.

Current federal regulations require only that each airline have a policy to ensure that all luggage can be safely stowed on takeoff and landing. Most airlines impose a two-bag limit. But they have the flexibility to accommodate different seating arrangements, relatively empty flights, and other local circumstances.

The big airlines and the flight attendants' union want to end that discretion. They crave a one-size-fits-all law. (Unlike Lipinski, they'd allow two bags, as long as they're small.) They don't want any upstart competitor to offer a passenger-friendly bag policy that might make them look bad. They're afraid passengers will be "confused."

In her testimony, Patricia Friend, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said the union does not like that "carriers have come to view the enforcement of carry-on rules--or lack of enforcement--as a competitive issue." It wants to take luggage out of the process of competition, innovation, and feedback.

The flight attendants cite scary statistics: 4,500 U.S. passengers injured by carry-on baggage each year. What they don't report is that there are 1.6 million passengers every day, or about 584 million a year. Only 0.0008 percent get hurt by carry-on luggage. Most people would gladly take those odds rather than stand around in an airport hoping their bags will arrive. (More checked luggage would mean even longer waits.)

The issue isn't safety. It's frayed nerves. When airplanes get crowded, passengers get testy. And they expect flight attendants to solve their storage problems. That makes work stressful for cabin crews. So their union has made carry-on luggage a political issue, sponsoring a Washington conference on the topic last fall.

But dragging in the government just lets the airlines dodge the underlying problem: Passengers don't trust them with their baggage and don't like waiting in long lines to check it or pick it up. Pass a law that limits carry-on bags, and the airlines can ignore their customers' wishes. They can blame mean old Congress for the inconvenience. Best of all, they can keep out competitors' new ideas.

A luggage law means no pressure to re-engineer baggage-handling or boarding procedures. No reason to spend money on new or redesigned planes with more cabin storage room. No need to be creative, to learn, to figure out better ways to operate. A luggage law, in short, stifles progress, eliminates flexibility, and preserves the status quo. It sucks imagination out of one more aspect of economic life.

No wonder they didn't have any passengers at those hearings last week. When it comes to protecting businesses from competition, creativity, and learning, letting customers speak is a serious impediment.