Carry-ons and courtesy need to co-exist

By Joe Sharkey
August 24, 2010

SPIRIT recently surprised the airline industry by introducing fees of $20 to $45 each to stow carry-on bags in overhead bins. In a Web video, Ben Baldanza, the chief executive of Spirit Airlines, describes the problem while his body is scrunched inside an overhead bin.

“Had we not implemented this, there’s no telling what people would try to put in an overhead bin,” said Mr. Baldanza, who is known as a tireless promoter of his ultralow fare (and, critics say, ultralow service). Certainly some industry competitors might welcome the idea of stuffing the ever-insistent Mr. Baldanza into an overhead bin. But the video does highlight one of the most serious complaints that passengers and flight attendants share: as people lug more stuff aboard to avoid the ever-increasing checked-bag fees, there is a chronic shortage of bin space.

It is clear that there are no good solutions to the problem, even though Spirit Airlines has drummed up its own answer. The fact is, most business travelers need to bring onboard a reasonably sized bag that requires overhead stowage. At the same time, crowded planes and limited space guarantee chronic frustration that often pits overworked flight attendants against overstressed passengers.

“I think the airlines are causing a lot of this stress,” said Pamela Eyring, the director of the Protocol School of Washington, a company that offers business etiquette and other social-interaction courses, including training flight attendants for how to manage that bane of air travel: other people.

Airlines, which generated $2.7 billion in revenue from fees for checking bags last year, have basically shrugged off the overhead-bin problem. That has turned the issue over to passengers and flight attendants to work out, usually unhappily. With most flights full, anxieties and tensions associated with stowing carry-on bags are soaring.

This becomes a challenge that requires, among other things, social coping skills and a mutual understanding of the fundamental problems within the environment of an airplane, Ms. Eyring said.

She was not impressed with Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who, after abruptly announcing that he had “had it” with annoying passengers and the travails of the job, grabbed two beers, pulled the emergency chute and slid into notoriety from a parked plane on Aug. 9.

Reports differ about what might have prompted Mr. Slater’s tantrum, but “even if he was provoked or insulted or assaulted in some way, he is a professional. Flight attendants receive training, for example, on how to deal with difficult passengers and in managing anger,” Ms. Eyring said.

But she has sympathy for the flight attendants who are being asked almost to do the impossible in ensuring safe stowage for all of those carry-on bags. She said that often passengers are trying to “fit 10 pounds of stuff into a five-pound bag,” while those around them risk personal injury in the process.

My reader e-mail indicates that the only consensus on how to mitigate the problem is to somehow eliminate big carry-on bags that exceed posted size limits. Passengers seethe at other passengers stumbling down the aisle “dragging their whole lives along” in a bag, as Ms. Eyring put it.

It’s been my experience that these oafs who are lugging bags the size of a refrigerator actually are a small minority. Most people tote reasonably sized bags.

And even discounting the airlines’ interest in generating more revenue from checked bags, any new procedure for carefully enforcing exact size limits on carry-on bags at the departure gate would create intolerable boarding delays.

So we are left, Ms. Eyring suggested, with a matter of social etiquette and of “being cognizant of other people and showing basic respect,” and an appreciation of social order.

Airlines need to step in, too, said Tim Houlne, the chief executive of Working Solutions, who says his company trains and employs more than 70,000 home-based agents in the United States for customer service call centers, including some for airlines.

“The airline industry is chopping service, giving customers less support, while raising fees and fares,” he said. “The consumer is getting upset, and you have the front-line employees bearing the brunt.”

Airlines, he said, need to be more forthright in addressing tensions between customers and employees over carry-on bags.

“I haven’t been on a flight in years that didn’t have a baggage issue,” he said.

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