Regular fliers will have spotted new charges appearing on the check-in experience. Although, with a little planning these can easily be avoided.
If, like us, you travel regularly, you’ll already be well aware of the ever stringent weight restrictions.
So, as clever travellers you probably seek out the empty check-in desk, then drop your hold bag on to see if you’ve made the weight.
The digital readout reveals you’ve either under-packed, which is good news, or your bag is too fat to fly and you’ll have to start shuffling items into other luggage.
It’s a smart move to ‘check before you drop’, something the airports know – probably why they’ve introduced scales for travellers to use: price £1!
The two tips to avoid having to loose the pounds on departure: buy your own digital scales so you can weigh-in at home, and get a travel jacket with damn big pockets!
Before you leave the house, get the bags checked. If they don’t fit on the scales (it’s likely they won’t) simply weigh yourself, then hop back on carrying the bag – the difference between the two is the weight of your case. And big pocket jackets give you the option of carrying through small, heavy items you had to pull from the hold.
Another bag charge is levied as you enter security. Remember the little see-through zip pouches they used to hand out? They are now to be found in an over-sized bubblegum machine, which also vends at £1. For your money – and your liquids less than 100ml – you get four regulation-size transparent bags.
Having found the best cheap flights around you’ll feel gutted having to pay up, so always keep zip bags from earlier trips or buy a pack from your local supermarket (found in the food/ cookery isle). If you really have to throw your coinage into the machine, go halves on what comes out; there are plenty of travellers in the same predicament as you so share your plastic security bags and share the love of travel ‘“ before they charge for that, too!
