I’ve noticed that passengers are increasingly prone to shuffle the bags of other passengers from one bin to another to make room for their stuff. This means at he end of the flight those other passengers have to go searching around looking for their bags, which means we are all all stuck in the aisle waiting to deplane that much longer.

Also, I often check the posted carryon capabilities of the aircraft I’ll be on, at the airline’s site. I’ve learned they aren’t to be trusted. A number of regional planes have bins that really can’t handle more than a fat briefcase.

Someone told me that a “travel hack”. If you NEED to check luggage, and you want to make it less likely that the airline will lose your bag do the following.

1. Travel with a starter pistol.
2. When you check your bag tell the airline that there is a starter pistol in the bag.

I guess that a starter pistol is considered a weapon, and the LAST thing that an airline wants to do is lose a bag with a weapon in it. Thus they treat bags that have weapons in them differently (as more of a priority) than the regular non-weapon carrying bags.

I can say that I have seen airport personal putting some bags aside and putting a tag on them that says WEAPON on it, so I’m guessing there is something to this.

-N

This works for me because I deliberately work to get a seat in the rear row, it means I get to walk out on the tarmac, walk up the stairs at the rear of the plan, get straight into my seat.

YMMV, but it works well for me here in Australia.