Palm trees. Crates of live lobsters. Sets of china. Totem poles, Skateboards. Fax machines. Vacuum cleaners.
And many, many laptop computers.
This is just a small sampling of airline passengers` carry-on baggage these days. Four years ago the Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to find ways to limit carry-on baggage, but flight attendants complain that the rules increasingly are ignored-by passengers and the airline gate agents who should be enforcing them.
Now the union that represents 33,000 flight attendants is launching an effort to persuade the FAA to tighten the rules and to prod airlines to enforce them.
”We all feel adamantly that the carry-on regulations are too ambiguous and inconsistent,” says Carol Schumaker, a flight attendant and union safety official. There are concerns that this summer, with flights filled because of steep fare discounts and a lot of first-time fliers, there will be even more chaos in the aisles.
Call for extra vigilance
Since 1988, the airlines have been required to restrict carry-on baggage and ensure it is stowed safely before takeoff and landing.
”I think we accomplished our safety objective for the most part,” says David Harrington, manager of the FAA`s air-transportation division. But he says that the agency is considering issuing a ”friendly reminder” to carriers to be extra vigilant this summer.
For their part, passengers have sound reasons for wanting to carry luggage with them. Some fear checked baggage will be lost or stolen. Others want to avoid the time it takes to check, and ultimately retrieve, their bags. Business people are especially addicted to carry-ons.
”Once they get off the airplane, they want to go right to their hotel or their appointment,” says Susan Young, a spokeswoman for USAir. ”They don`t want to have to wait for luggage. Time is money.”
The airlines play down the carry-on situation. Joe Hopkins, a spokesman for UAL Corp.`s United Airlines, says that while ”carry-on luggage is a problem, it`s not a serious one in the context of carrying 170,000 passengers a day.”
But flight attendants, often literally left holding the bag, say more action is needed.
”I had one woman with two toddlers, and she had each one carrying two bags so there were six bags among the three of them,” complains Sheryl Meyers, a USAir flight attendant.
Things can get even stickier on commuter lines, where storage space is scarcer than in jampacked jumbo jets. Beth DeProspero, a flight attendant for Atlantic Coast Airlines, says she had a passenger who didn`t want to check a 3 1/2-foot Mickey Mouse carved by her brother.
Mundane worries
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Passengers long have dragged all manner of things on board. Years ago, says Claudia Ridley, a flight attendant, a blind passenger brought on his guide dog; halfway through the flight Ridley noticed the passenger was reading the newspaper. When she confronted him, he replied, ”You don`t think I`d put my dog in the cargo hold, did you?”
In recent years, flight attendants have become more worried about the mundane: massive numbers of heavy garment bags, called ”mobile homes” and
”hanging trunks” by some in the airline industry, as well as sharp-edged briefcases and clunky computers. Airlines ask passengers to stow the heavier items under the seats in front of them, but often the bags and boxes don`t fit or the passengers resist because they don`t want to give up the legroom.
The result is that the stuff can rain on people`s heads when the bins pop open during hard landings or turbulence, or when the bins are opened by passengers or flight attendants.
Ask Patti Trantow of Morgan Hill, Calif. Two years ago she was occupying an aisle seat on a United Airlines flight when a laptop computer tumbled out of an overhead bin and fell on her head. The blow caused a huge goose egg and intense pain.
”I didn`t sleep for four days,” says Trantow, who complained to United and got a $500 check and a travel voucher.
After her experience, Tranow stopped using aisle seats-and it`s a good thing. On a commuter flight to Southern California seven months after the falling-computer incident, a heavy metal briefcase came crashing down from a bin onto the empty aisle seat next to her.
Back injuries
In most cases, ”the injuries may not be traumatic, but the fact is that people are hurt every day” by items falling out of overhead bins, says Wendy Smeaton, a flight attendant.
United says that in 1991 it received 118 claims from passengers saying they were injured by falling items. Trying to lift megabags into the overhead compartments has sidelined dozens of flight attendants with back injuries.
In an emergency, carry-on luggage can spill out of overhead compartments, becoming lethal weapons and blocking exits, experts warn. During the July 1989 crash of a United jetliner in Sioux City, Iowa, ”the bags were like missiles,” recalls Jan Murray, one of the flight attendants on the plane.
”They all came down simultaneously.”
During the emergency evacuation of a Delta Air Lines flight at the Atlanta airport in May 1991, one flight attendant ”had to push one woman who got stuck (in the over-wing exit) and would not let go of her carry-on luggage,” according to a National Transportation Safety Board report. ”The woman had both legs hanging outside and had grabbed the left side of the window but would not drop the luggage so she would get herself out.”
As a practical matter, the airlines try to limit carry-on bags to two a passenger but sometimes are reluctant to enforce the limit. Under the FAA rule, the only bags that can be carried on board are those that fit in the overhead bin or under the seats. But the rule doesn`t specify the number of bags a passenger may carry on, nor does it specify weight limits. Neither does it restrict heavier objects to floor storage.
Airlines want flexibility
The flight attendants` union wants the FAA to limit officially the number of carry-on bags to two and to apply that limit to each flight and each airline. In addition, the union plans to urge the agency to set up boxes or some other device at the gates to measure bags easily to see if they are too big to stow in the cabin. And it wants the airlines to get serious about enforcing the limit.
The airlines want flexible carry-on programs. They say it makes little sense, for example, to impose strict limits on a flight that is nearly empty. ”When the passengers get on board and there`s plenty of space, they tend to get upset” with limits on carry-on baggage, says Walter Coleman, vice president for operations at the Air Transport Association, the industry`s trade group. He says that he believes the carry-on situation has ”improved considerably” in recent years but that ”nobody says things are perfect.”
One factor that might motivate passengers to cut down on carry-ons is the airlines` improved record on handling checked bags. Recently the Transportation Department reported that the rate in April of consumer complaints for mishandled baggage-which includes lost, damaged, delayed or pilfered luggage-was 3.94 items per 1,000 passengers on domestic flights, the lowest since the department began compiling the information more than four years ago.
”It shows there has been increased airline attention to their bag-handling programs,” says Hoyte Decker, assistant director for consumer affairs at the department.
There is no question that feelings run high on the issue. Washington Post columnist Bob Levey wrote recently that he refuses to check luggage and that airlines should make it easier to store hanging bags on board. He got a round of angry letters from readers who accuses him of being ”loutish” and
”selfish” and ”the passenger from hell.”
Chastised, Levey promises to become a bag-checker.