Cheap Ticket Tips: Travel Light

Anyone who’s flown in the last few years knows that the price of your airline ticket isn’t the only cost associated with your flight – the airlines have other ways these days of extracting additional cash from your wallet. People who travel frequently enough to have achieved an elite status with an airline are generally exempt from all the additional fees, but for the rest of us, flying has become the “nickel and dime me to death” experience.

The biggest additional airline fee is for luggage – very few airlines allow passengers even one checked bag for free anymore, and a few are starting to charge even for carry-on bags. Airlines in the latter camp are typically the low-cost carriers – most notably Ryanair in Europe and Spirit Air in the United States – and although they’ve gotten flak for it, these no-frills airlines aren’t making excuses or apologizing. In fact, in many cases, they’re even raising their existing baggage fees. They take that “no-frills” badge awfully seriously, don’t they?

>> Learn more about airline baggage fees

While we used to be able to check two bags per person on most flights, it’s not as if we weren’t paying for that privilege – we just weren’t paying for it specifically. Ticket prices were once higher, spreading the cost of things like checked bags, in-flight meals, and even pillows or blankets across all passengers. When the cost of an airline ticket began to drop quickly, airlines were a bit slow to catch up by adding those services on as things we had to pay for in order to get. In more recent years, the rising cost of fuel means that airlines are raising both the cost of a ticket and the cost of all those additional services – including luggage.

The best way to avoid paying an extra fee for checking a bag is to travel light and avoid checking a bag in the first place. In addition to being cheaper, traveling with only carry-on bags also means you don’t wait in line to check a bag, you don’t wait for your bag to come off the carousel, and you don’t risk having the airline lose your luggage altogether. Not only that, when you travel light it benefits the airline in another way – a lighter overall load makes planes more fuel efficient.

Keep in mind that there are weight and size restrictions on carry-on bags, so you can’t simply pack the same amount of stuff you’d put in two suitcases in one carry-on bag – you’ll pay for overweight or oversized bags, too, if not forced to check them (and pay that fee). Since fees for checking a bag can range from $20-45 for even the first bag, however, that adds up quickly. Budget-conscious travelers save money when they travel light.

Further reading:
Need help in the packing light department? Here are some articles to get you started.

• How to Travel Very Lightly
• How to Pack for Two Different Trips in One Bag
• Best Carry-On Bags for Under $70
• Non-Liquid Toiletries to Get Around TSA Rules

photo by cote