Travel Tip #5: weigh your luggage

Tuesday 18 August 2009

If you think you're going to get anywhere near your maximum baggage weight allowance - weigh your luggage before you leave home.

This can be done using regular bathroom scales; simply weigh yourself, then weight yourself again whilst holding your bag(s). The difference between the two is the weight of your luggage.

This serves two purposes:

1. It should prevent any unwanted excess weight charges at check-in
2. Airport scales don't always get reset or calibrated as often as they should, and hence are not always 100% accurate. If you know the weight of your bag, you'll avoid getting overcharged should the airport scales be wrong.

CASE STUDY:

Recently a friend of mine flew from London Stansted to Edinburgh via easyJet. At the easyJet check-in desk they weighed his bag, claimed it was 29kg and tried to charge him £81 (£9/kg) for the excess. Luckily, he'd weighed his bag beforehand and knew it was only 20Kg and demanded they reset the scales.

Low and behold - their scales had been wrong and the true weight of 20kg was given - but how many others got caught out?

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