The proposal to remove passengers from flights for heavy bags found an alternative

Those flying with an excess of hand luggage were advised to hand over the “excess” in the luggage room

Employees of Sheremetyevo Airport wanted to deal with one of the reasons for the flight delay and put an end to it. The Air Harbor Directorate is one step away from making a responsible decision: to remove from flights those passengers who have an impressive size of hand luggage. It takes too long to deal with these unscrupulous customers, and as a result, due to such private delays, other passengers suffer and entire flights are canceled.

The airport workers’ initiative is explained as follows. All oversized carry-on baggage must be screened in the baggage handling system, but if such baggage is found in the passenger’s possession immediately before boarding, then the time for its inspection, which can take about an hour, is not provided for by the work schedule. Every month at Sheremetyevo there is at least one such emergency situation. Many will agree to deal less with such circumstances, but as soon as the proposal was announced, its opponents immediately appeared.

“The proposal to remove a passenger from a flight because of heavy baggage is contrary to the Air Code,” says Viktor Gorbachev, General Director of the Airport Association. – In my opinion, passengers should simply be reminded of their responsibility to others. In the cabin, as a rule, you can take 10 kilograms, this is according to the law, and the rest, please, load it into the luggage compartment and take it. That is, weigh your own hand luggage before leaving the house, pass a part to your companion, put it in your luggage in the end.

In Gorbachev’s memory, there are no cases when the overweight of hand luggage caused serious problems. Passengers are simply required to pay extra and send extra things to the luggage compartment. True, it is precisely when checking this momentarily formed baggage that precious minutes are lost.

– In the legislative acts, excess baggage is not indicated as a possible reason for a flight ban, – says lawyer Larisa Izmerova. – You can be removed from the flight for smoking, inappropriate behavior, drunkenness in the end. To introduce a new rule, it will be necessary to rewrite the Air Code. But there is an obvious way out. The passenger should be given the opportunity to quickly check in “extra things” to the storage room, as they say, without leaving the ticket office, in order to pick them up later, for example, upon return. Or, in extreme cases, arrange with other passengers on the flight to take over his hand luggage.