Jet2, Ryanair, Easyjet, TUI passengers urged to avoid £120 fine with ‘bag limit’ loophole
Passengers flying with Jet2, Easyjet, Ryanair and TUI have been told to avoid the £120 fine.
It’s always one of the most stressful parts of flying - wrestling with your carry-on bag and your hold luggage, desperately trying to keep the weight down to be able to squeeze it onboard without anybody stopping you and trying to slap you with a fine.
But Jet2, Ryanair, Easyjet and TUI passengers are being urged to avoid paying a penalty for an overweight bag by making use of a little known rule available to exploit if you’re going on holiday this summer.
Usually, passengers are allowed one carry-on bag to bring onto the plane itself, as well as at least one checked-in suitcase for the hold luggage.
But there is a loophole for your check-in luggage (the one that gets taken onto the plane by staff and put in the cargo hold).
It’s known as ‘bag pooling’ and is available to passengers flying with Ryanair, Jet2 and TUI.
To do it, you need to share your bag weight allowance with another passenger. For example, if you have a much heavier bag than your partner, you could ‘pool’ your limits and divide the average weight of each bag between the two of you.
For example, Ryanair has a weight limit of just 20kg for a checked in bag on its flights. But you can ‘pool’ this limit with another passenger. So one person could have a 15kg bag and the other a 25kg bag - the two together add up to 40kg, so that’s allowed, as one is 5k overweight and one is 5kg underweight.
Ryanair says: “Yes. Bag pooling is allowed between passengers with check-in bags on the same flight reservation. This means that if you have 2 20kg Check-in Bags (40kg total) on your booking, one of those bags could weigh 15kg while the other weighs 25kg. However, no bag can weigh more than 32kg.”
TUI also offers bag pooling. Its rule allows you to pool up to five passenger bags. It says: “If hold baggage is included with your booking, you can take up to five bags per passenger, as long as the combined weight of all the bags is within your maximum luggage allowance. It's also worth mentioning that no single bag can weigh more than 25kg.
“For TUI flights, you're allowed to pool your luggage allowance with anyone else travelling on your booking. However, each bag can only weigh up to 25kg.”
Easyjet says: "If you’re travelling with family or friends on the same flight and booking, you can pool your total weight allowance.
"This means that the total weight allowance can be split among the total number of bags booked, as long as no single item weighs more than 32kg. Maximum total size (length + width + height) = under 275cm."
Jet2 is less clear but appears to allow it too, its site says: “You can book up to three 22kg hold bags per person, per flight by paying the applicable charges. We do not allow single hold bags that weigh more than 32kg.”
It does stipulate that the fine for going over the limit, though, is £12 per kg.
It says: “We charge £12 per kg for baggage that exceeds your total weight allowance.”
Ryanair’s excess baggage fee is between £9-11 per kg.
If you were to fail to pool and your bag was 10kg overweight, that would mean a fine of £110-120 depending on the airline.
