myguideTravel Blog

Carry On Bags and Duty Free

January 6th, 2008

I travel a lot. On airplanes, trains and cars and I, like most frequent travelers, have a few things I do to attempt to improve my commute. One of these is to avoid checking any luggage for carriage in the hold when flying. Like many of my fellow travelers, I try to cram as much as I can into a carry on so I don’t have to wait at the baggage return carousel at my destination or, in the worst case scenario, wear the same clothes for 3 days while my airline attempts to re-unite me with my luggage if it makes an unscheduled en route stop . So, it was with elation that I read the British Airport Authority (BAA) has recently revised it one carry on only bag restriction at 7 of its 8 airports (Gatwick is still excluded). I transited BAA’s Heathrow Airport three to four times a month in 2007 and it never failed to perturb me how frustrating this policy was for travelers. Not only is Heathrow one of the worst airports to transit on a good day, but this onerous restriction used to compel me to have to check my roller bag as I could only take one carry on (my laptop bag) through security. My airline would let me take two bags, and when I checked in at Boston Logan, the TSA lets me carry two on, but connecting at Heathrow I would only be permitted one by BAA. So, either I check it in in Boston or abandon it at Heathrow in the flight connection centre. Now, as I would appreciate a change of clothes when abroad I had no choice but to check it.

I’m not sure what the exact reason was for BAA’s policy, but I presume it had something to do with speeding up the queues at the security check points. If that was indeed the case, I think the policy only made it worse. Every time I went through security at Heathrow there was an army of BAA agents patrolling the queues to ensure everyone complied with the one hand bag policy and forcing those in violation to either (a) abandon their excess bags or (b) squeeze everything into one bag. As you may surmise, when unsuspecting travelers with more than one carry on approach security and were advised of the policy, it caused a back up as they decided what to do (almost always option ‘b’) and then proceeded to try and stuff 20 kilos of carry on into a 10 kilo bag.

Nevertheless, once beyond security (and a bewildering 2nd security stop in Terminal 3 where one has to take off one’s footwear and pass it through another security channel after just passing through the first security checkpoint, something I have not seen in the other terminal at Heathrow or anywhere else) you can purchase all the duty free from BAA that you can carry and take it on the plane with you too. And, as anyone who has transited Heathrow knows, there are more shops per square inch at the airport than anywhere else on Earth. One of my favorite experiences in Terminal 3 is to try to get to my gate fragrance free while passing down the gauntlet of the aggressive ladies selling perfumes and colognes int the duty free hall to all. Lately, I’ve taken the tactic of cutting through the liquor section and pretending to purchase whiskey so as to try and avoid them.

In closing, I’m delighted that BAA has taken steps to address the one carry on issue and hopefully it will follow at Gatwick soon too. I know that I am looking forward to it, as I’m sure most travelers who transit the BAA airports frequently are as well as we all attempt to put the civil back in civil aviation.

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