We made a travel mistake checking bags on our most recent international flight. Those of us who chose to write about travel are not immune from travel mistakes. Hopefully, this will provide you a little amusement and let you know what you can do if you run into this issue.
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The Back Story
On a recent flight from Baltimore to the Dominican Republic, my wife and I were checking one bag on our Southwest Airlines flight. Unfortunately, Baltimore was struck with snow and ice that morning, making the journey to the airport take much longer than anticipated. We arrived at the Southwest check-in counter with 52 minutes to go before the flight was scheduled to depart. In accordance with Southwest’s policies on checking baggage for international flights, bags must be dropped at least 1 hour ahead of departure. We knew we were outside this window when we arrived at the airport. We were still hopeful that arriving 52 minutes ahead of the scheduled departure was close enough given the rough weather.
To our disappointment, Southwest did not budge on their policy citing that they did not have the people available to take bags to the plane since all the other bags had already departed. I can’t be upset at Southwest as they were abiding by their policy that was clearly published ahead of time. I should only be upset at myself for not getting an earlier start given the weather that I knew was coming. Lesson Learned: Give yourself extra time when checking bags to avoid a travel mistake.
Setting aside blame and the shoulda, woulda, coulda talk, what were our options? We had two options as stated by the Southwest check-in agent assisting us:
1. Take the Next Flight
The first option was taking the next flight to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic being offered by Southwest. Unfortunately, there was only one flight per day between Baltimore and the Dominican Republic on Southwest. If there were more daily flights available, this may not have been a bad option. However, with only one daily flight, this meant that we would have to wait a day to start our vacation. We would also lose out on one of the days we had booked in the Caribbean. The other negative of this was the weather in Baltimore was not suppose to get any better over the next day. It was already questionable if we were going to be able to depart that day. Waiting a day would not help the odds.
2. All Carry On Luggage
The other alternative given was to carry on what we had brought. Obviously, we were not going to be able to carry on the checked baggage we had packed in due to it being too large for the overhead bins. However, to Southwest’s credit, they do provide options for this case. Southwest has large duffel bags that they will sell you for $25 each that will fit in the overhead bins. They are available to people in our situation where we can’t check a bag. I have to assume they also make these available to the individuals who have exceeded check bag weight requirements and need to carry on some items.
The obvious downsides of this are that you are limited to 2 carry-on bags per person and carry on-restrictions will apply to everything you packed (liquid limitations, restrictions on sharp objects – pocket knives, etc…). Depending on how you packed, restricted items in your checked bags would now need to be discarded to carry on. The other downside is that you will be leaving your hold-sized luggage behind never to be reclaimed. Some airports may have luggage valets where you could leave your luggage until you return. Baltimore does not have these so we were out of our luggage if we went this route.
Fixing Our Checked Bag Travel Mistake
As you can see above, neither of these options is great. Picking between losing a day of your vacation or paying $25/duffle and throwing away your luggage isn’t the way you want to start a trip. The ultimate moral of the story is to avoid this situation. Give yourself enough time to get to the airport and check-in before the time limits are reached.
In my situation, we ended up paying the $25/duffle to carry on the luggage and keep our vacation days intact. We paid for 2 duffles (a total of $50) since we already had a backpack that we were carrying on. That backpack had to get consolidated into one of the duffles to get down to the 2 bag carry-on limit.
To soften the financial blow, we did pay for those two duffle bags with the Bank of America Premium Rewards credit card. This credit card provides $100 per year in airline fee reimbursements. The purchase of the duffles will count towards this so we expect to get $50 refunded by Bank of America. We also had to discard our original luggage. The cost of the luggage was less than the cost of the vacation night that we would be losing if we waited until the next day to leave.
In the end, we weighed the financial and schedule impacts and chose the lesser of two evils. We have learned from this travel mistake to ensure we are more prepared when checking bags in the future. Another small silver lining is we will be in the market for a new bag when we return from this trip.
Let me know what travel mistakes you have made in the past in the comments below.
