Martina and I aren’t the most frequent fliers but we do fly a bit. In 2014 we had – only counting flights we took together – about sixteen luggage check-ins with seven different airlines including two low cost carriers.
We always have at most one small on-board bag each and our checked-in baggage would be either only one large suitcase between the two of us or an additional small bag or back-bag. We never exceed our total combined checked-in luggage weight. But the large suitcase is often a few kilos above the ticket’s max weight. In all these years of flying that was never a problem.
Until we checked in for our flight in Vienna and the Austrian Airlines check-in told us that we have to pay excess for our 28kg suitcase which we checked in in addition to a small 12kg bag even though we were 6kg below our combined limit and our hand luggage was 3kg below the limit. I was taken aback and mentioned that this was a first but was told that Austrian Airlines always did it like that. So we re-packed. But another great indicator on how great it is to fly with Austrian Airlines was when we were told on the next free counter that – after we re-packed – “You are almost there” since we still had 24kg in the large suitcase. (1kg off the ticket’s allowed limit). So we moved 1-2 kg in to our hand luggage and finally were allowed to check in.
Leaving Vienna after a seeing our family and friends is always difficult and Martina and her mother were both emotional and having this useless experience did not help at all. So I decided to ask Austrian Airlines how their behavior could ever had lead to a positive outcome for anyone. After an automated response I was asked about the booking number and responded with the booking PDF, but never received an answer. I asked them again a week ago but apart from an automated response never heard back again.
We did go out of our way to fly Austrian Airlines the last two times we visited Austria; definitely not worth it.
We did get a response in the end.
About four months after our complaint Austrian Airlines emailed us and let us know that they had lots of customer inquires.
While the response from Austrian did acknowledge that we did not have more luggage than we were allowed *in total*, they are of the opinion that they have been accommodating in the past in allowing customers to move their total allowed weight around and thereby increasing the weight of one bag above 23kg (the allowed individual weight).
On one hand I am glad that they have actually responded, on the other hand they have not actually answered my question from the original email which was:
“Who was served by making passengers unpack”
So my view is that:
More weight -> more fuel -> bigger expense.
But if the total weight does not change because it is below the total allowed weight, there is no change in cost.
I go even further and assume that – generally – when Martina and I fly with only one 28kg piece of luggage instead of two pieces of 14kg each, it actually reduces the handling cost (though in the case of our Austrian flight we had two, so no change in cost).