Why pay £21 when ‘hands free’ will only cost you £7?
Q In your article on easyJet halving its cabin baggage allowance, I believe there’s a mistake – or at least an omission. You said that it will cost £21 on a typical flight to take an extra cabin bag on board. But easyJet provides a service called “hands free”. It allows you to check in your large cabin bag for £7 and allows you to take an additional bag on board. Surely that is a decent alternative?
Chris R
A Britain’s biggest budget airline is emulating its even bigger Irish rival, Ryanair, in drastically reducing the size of its free cabin baggage allowance unless you pay extra. To take anything bigger than a bag that slips under the seat in front of you, easyJet demands that you pay more for an “upfront” or extra legroom seat. If you agree to pay typically £21, you will be able to bring a larger bag in addition to the smaller one – and get
the seat of your choice, if that is important to you.
Passengers holding easyJet Plus cards, or who pay higher “flexi” fares, will also be allowed to bring two bags into the cabin. The airline says the new policy will cut queue times during boarding and should eliminate the need for some passengers’ hand luggage to be placed in the hold.
You are right that, at present, easyJet has a £7 “hands-free” product – which I believe is aimed at dealing with the problem of too many cabin bags. “We know that dragging a cabin bag through the airport, unpacking it at security and then rushing for locker space can take all the fun out of travelling,” says the airline. Instead, it suggests: “Simply drop your cabin bag off at easyJet Plus bag drop, walk past all those unpacking at security, board the aircraft early or at your leisure and we’ll have your bag delivered amongst the first.”
But I contend this is not an acceptable substitute on two grounds. First, many travellers (me included) highly value the chance to take cabin baggage on board, for reasons of speed and security. Second, I can see no guarantee that the hands-free arrangement will survive in its present form for long, if the problem of too many cabin bags is solved as easyJet hopes.
While passengers who have an existing booking for travel from 10 February will be offered the chance to use the “hands-free” service for free (in recognition that they booked on the basis of the larger allowance), in the long term I think “hands free” represents extra complexity in an airline that prides itself on simplicity.
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