Update on November 20, 2008 by
Frank@OBOW
Frank@OBOW
OBOW post from May about the pain in the bins.
Be sure to check out Skip’s post “The death of one-bag travel?” The battle of the bins is putting the squeeze on us and the nasty gate-checking monster is rearing its ugly head. I’ve had several close scrapes but have thus far avoided the gate check except on one tiny regional jet. Go the forum and share your experiences and tips.
Frank@OBOW
OBOW post from May about the pain in the bins.
Frank@OBOW
From Salon.com, to this point:
When boarding, please, for the love of God, do not place your carry-on bags in the first empty bin that you come to. Use a bin as close to your seat as possible.
It drives me crazy when I see a guy shoving his 26-inch Tumi into a bin above Row 5, then continuing on to his assigned seat in Row 52. I know it’s tempting, but this causes the forward bins to fill up quickly. Because airplanes are usually boarded back to front, there are no spaces left for subsequent passengers whose assigned seats are in the forward part of the cabin. They are forced to travel backward to stow their belongings, then return upstream, against the flow of traffic, clogging the aisle.
Found this at flyertalk.com, thread titled “Should airlines assign bins along with seats?” - sounds good to me. Simply enforcing size/number of pieces restrictions would help.