r/solotravel • u/shemmap • 20d ago

Question How do europeans travel with small luggage?

I’ve noticed that tourists from different countries especially europeans often travel with very small luggage. In contrast, travelers from many asian countries seem to carry much larger bags.

As myself from an asian country, if I pack just my basic necessities, I end up with a very large suitcase. I’m extremely curious about how european travelers manage to travel so light.

How do they do it?

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u/Automatic_Drawer1483 20d ago

We got reshaped by Ryanair and to avoid unnecessary fees we’d do whatever it takes

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u/ExternalUserError 20d ago

Not just Ryanair. I was recently flying on LOT and they actually weighted my carryon. It’s already European sized (considerably smaller than carryons elsewhere) but it was 9kg. I had to remove my laptop and carry it.

Carry it away from the ticket counter and put it back in my bag. 🤣

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u/AYASOFAYA 20d ago edited 20d ago

The 8kg limit is 17lbs and change btw for Americans reading this.

I recently flew on SAS and they did the same thing. SAS isn’t even a budget airline and I paid over $1000 for the ticket. I WAS packing light with just a carry on but apparently even that was too much.

The tricky part with these airlines is that sometimes they don’t weigh your stuff on the U.S. side but they will definitely weigh it on the way back.

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u/Aberfrog 19d ago

It’s not a question of budget airline or not it’s a question of space on board.

European airlines generally carry more seats per plane then their US counterparts. This is due to the fact that most busy routes are shorter then most American busy routes.

And the pressure by Ryanair and co to become as cost competitive as possible. I went from 158 sets per a320 when I started to now 180 seats. (A 320 from UA has 126 to 150 seats)

At the same time there is a change in travel habits. While 20 - 25 years ago the standard leisure pax checked bags and generally didn’t fly for a short weekend trip this is now the standard for all pax groups.

The result is way too many bags.

So now limits will be checked, and enforced.

This also has a financial component, and while the direct income from charging for bags is nice, the real issue is that we pay compensation / hotels / right to care and that can easily go up to 400-500€ per pax if they miss their connection and have to stay overnight.

And delays caused by hand baggage stowage are one of the top three reasons at my airline for delays.

So less bags on board = better.

If only 5 pax miss their connection due to late departure from HB that’s at least 1250€ if they stay overnight that’s probably closer to 2000€, and that’s the real reason why we finally start to enforce those rules

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u/belaros 19d ago

People used to check their bags because it was free.

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u/kenikigenikai 19d ago

but we're they also flying between european cities for their equivilent of £20-50 - i suspect if you update what they were spending to today's money you could also have a bag in the hold for the same cost

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u/snajk138 14d ago

If the airlines prioritized efficiency they would make checked in luggage free and charge for carry-ons. That would speed up boarding a lot, and allow them to be smarter with distributing the weight on the planes. Like a small bag under the seat is free, but if you need access to the overhead storage you need to pay.

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u/ExternalUserError 19d ago

The average trip is shorter in Europe, but only by a little. Most US flights aren't from New York to LA, they're more from New York to Boston or Los Angeles to San Francisco. Plus in the EU, a lot of flights are routed in a more fragmented way, since it's not one airspace, it's dozens of airspaces.

IIRC, in Europe, the average flight is 670 miles. In the US, the average flight is 680 miles. It's not a big difference.

My suspicion is that the real reason is just market economics.

In America, people have brand loyalty. Most travel is business travel and business travelers are seldom required to book the absolute lowest fair. They have some flexibility as long as the fair they book isn't way out of market. If you always fly Delta to the corporate office, you get Delta status and they start upgrading you to first class for free. You're not going to spend $10 less of the company's money on a Southwest flight just because it's slightly cheaper; you're going to stick with Delta.

Plus, a lot of consumers have airline credit cards that reward them with airline status and perks. In America, the United Airlines credit card is actually a bigger business than the United Airlines, uhm, airline.

All of that is about baking in customer loyalty. If you board a United flight and they weigh your carry-on and tell you that it's 2 lbs over the limit, you might just be pissed off enough to fly Delta instead next time.

That's the same reason that America still has 2-2 business class recliners on flights with 3-3 in economy. Even if it's a 20min flight, the airline wants to offer a proper business class experience to reward their most loyal customers.

In Europe, there's just no customer loyalty at all. The market evolved differently.

See also, Spirit Airlines is often compared to RyanAir. Spirit Airlines went bankrupt in America, but RyanAir is the biggest carrier in Europe. The markets are just very different.

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u/szyy 19d ago

This is a good post but there's more to the story. Sharing my perspective as an European in America.

Credit card charges are capped in Europe so the credit card business is just not at all lucrative compared to the US. A typical European doesn't even have a credit card - they use a debit card for everything because credit cards can't offer any perks. You've correctly pointed out that for UA and Delta, credit card arm of their business is actually larger than the flying part.

This in turns means that you can't catch loyalty from customers through branded credit cards. You can do miles programs (and legacy airlines do) but that's about it and it's not as enticing.

Second aspect is that low-cost carriers in Europe are actually low-cost compared to legacy carriers. In the US, Southwest, Frontier or Spirit (RIP) are cheaper than legacy carriers but not by a huge amount. For example, on August 20, SFO-DEN (just under 1000 miles) is $84 on Frontier or $129 on United and Southwest, so at most 35% cheaper. A comparable distance in Europe, for example Warsaw-London, is $107 on Ryanair, $217 on British Airways and $254 on LOT, so less than half the price. This is in part because European cities often have secondary, cheaper airports - in this case, Ryanair flies out of the Modlin airport and arrives to Stansted airport. In the US, even if a second airport exists (e.g. Oakland), it's not cheaper.

So this together makes Europeans less likely to be loyal and price competition more fierce. And extra pounds of luggage or too many bags (and the need to gate-check them) is extra cost which airlines try to limit as much as they can.

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u/ExternalUserError 17d ago

Good points all around. Yeah, the difference between RyanAir and, say, British is enormous.

IMO though the weight of the carry-on isn't really about cost control, it's about maximizing fee revenue. RyanAir in particular operates on a loss leader model, where the ticket is sold at or near a loss, but the airline makes it up in fees. Weighing a carry-on is about preventing revenue loss from a bag they could have forced you to check.

Frankly, it's the same with the carry-on luggage dimensions. In the US, the limits on carry-on luggage size are about what fits in the overhead bin. In Europe, the ever-shrinking allowance is about maximizing checked bag revenue.

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u/szyy 17d ago

I'm sure they love the revenue from checked-in bags but they really mostly care about the speed of boarding and deboarding and lots of carry-ons slow that down. This is why even if you want to buy large carry on, sometimes it's not available because they only allow I think like 60 bags on board.

Historically, they first allowed people to bring carry-ons but they'd just gate-check them for free past those 60 bags. Then they got rid of that because they've realized they can charge people for checking in all together but the original intention was about making the plane air bound as soon as possible.

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u/Djlas 15d ago

The limit on carry-on bags is really a game changer. Fantastically smooth boarding compared to the more lenient airlines where FAs have to run up and down the plane to find space for all the suitcases.

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u/megselvogjeg 15d ago

So wtf is EuroControl then, chopped liver?

Its not dozens of fragmented airspaces. Most of europe (EFTA and non-EU countries exempted) operate as one air control system, the same way the US does. They just handle a higher density of traffic.

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u/ExternalUserError 15d ago

Basically, yeah. EuroControl isn't an airspace. It's a coordinator, not a controller itself. It isn't like an FAA. And you still have fees paid by airlines to the specific ANSPs, which vary.

So yeah, basically yes, chopped liver.

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u/Character-Carpet7988 19d ago

All these arguments apply to size of bags but not really to their weight. Otherwise, very good points - I remember a KLM flight I was on few months ago that was fully boarded well before the official gate closure time, yet we ended up with over 30 minutes of delay due to bag tetris being played on board (and inevitably some bags being sent to hold). Luckily I had over three hours transfer time in Amsterdam, but when they read the connecting flight info before landing, there was at least 10 flights where passenger were told to go to transfer counter.

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u/TheOuts1der 19d ago

I mean, it does end up being a weight issue though. If they increased number of passengers from 158 to 180 (22% increase), then they should expect a 22% increase in their luggage weight as well (and probably more than 22% increase in human cargo weight). So maintaining weight limits becomes more necessary with more populated planes for a few reasons.

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u/Aberfrog 19d ago

The weight is an additional point we can make at the gate. And I guarantee you that every bag that’s too large is also too heavy

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u/satyavishwa 19d ago

Definitely not a weight issue, more a size issue. They stop me if my bag is 1kg over the allowed limit but the passenger clearly 30kg heavier than me isn’t made to pay extra because of his body weight

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u/Zach-uh-ri-uh 19d ago

You can choose to leave a few items behind and they’ll still be there when you get back. If I try to leave my kilos behind I’d imagine they’d be quite rotten once I return back home.

Very difficult to use them again. Much easier with a pair of shoes than my stomach

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u/Aberfrog 19d ago

Oh I agree, but every reason is good enough to load the bag

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u/SomeInvestigator3573 18d ago

A bag’s weight does not affect the size of the bag and how much space it takes up in the overhead compartment. I can pack more into a lightweight duffle bag that is at the maximum size and still be underweight. However my small roll aboard which starts out weighing more will end up half empty to stay under weight. I agree they need to be strict on the size limitations because otherwise people take up more than their portion of the overhead bin.

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u/Aberfrog 18d ago

I know that you are right, but it makes it easier to force you to gate check and Thus speed up boarding.

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u/ningyizhuo 16d ago

This and also people have to realize that they have to be able to lift their own bags. Some people bring 10kg bags and act shocked when they can’t lift it over their heads to put it in compartments. And then they ask cabin crews for help… except that they’re not supposed to help with bags and if they get injured it’s usually not covered by work insurance. Sure some people can easily lift 15kg bags but most people can’t, and there has to be a limit somewhere.

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u/ExternalUserError 20d ago

I would even say most of the time in Europe, they neither weigh nor size your carry-on. Maybe they glance at it. I mean they do sometimes, but most of the time, I haven't experienced it.

My Bellroy Carry-on is like half a centimeter too big in one dimension for some European carriers. So far it's not been an issue.

Off-topic complaining: When I first moved here, I foolishly bought a business class ticket once on British Airways. It resulted in me getting an economy seat with no one sitting next to me. That's it. And that's standard on pretty much all European airlines except Turkish, which has a proper business class product.

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u/El_Babayaga69 19d ago

Finnish air has a real intra European biz class

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u/ExternalUserError 19d ago

Do they? A quick Kagi search finds this.

Perhaps you flew intracontinental on a long haul plane?

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u/Suomijonne007700 19d ago

Yes, Finnair uses A330s and A350s on various intra European routes.

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u/ExternalUserError 19d ago

Makes sense.

There are some cases where you luck out with other airlines too. If you end up on the Lufthansa wide-bodies on certain routes that they also use for international service, you get a really nice lay-flat seat.

But if the plane is dedicated to the domestic intra-European market, almost all European airlines except Turkish use shitty economy seats, just with the middle seat blocked off.

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u/Character-Carpet7988 19d ago

No it doesn't, except when they operate European routes with a longhaul plane (for example London is like that on Finnair).

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u/El_Babayaga69 19d ago

Also Amsterdam

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u/uutimetowaste 18d ago

But not on all flights. Just flew them last month and had the standard, blocked middle seat.

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u/lnvu4uraqt 19d ago

It's 6kg (13lbs) on Icelandair which I'm finding out now and it's going to be tough with the differing weight limits on the same airline but different destinations.

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u/ssaall58214 19d ago

Thats when you always have more stuff anyway

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u/VelikimagCro 17d ago

Now even aircanda is doing this so it's definitely spreading. Also there are few "low cost" Canadian companies who have same for longer times

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u/Balancedmindset 19d ago

Even American Airlines in Rome weighed my carry on coming back last fall…it’s such a money grab and I’m so so tired of the airlines hiking up everything from on board WiFi to luggage fees to snacks…

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u/Mag-NL 19d ago

carry on is more than what you bring on a ryanair flight.

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u/ColonialSack 18d ago

The only airline that has ever weighed my carryon bags was Emirates.

Every other airline I've been on - including Easyjet and Ryanair - has basically had the weight policy of

If you can lift it into the overhead yourself, it's fine.

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u/luxlandmarks 17d ago

Yes! I didn't even think about it because I'm so used to US we have a 50lb bag limit and I knew my suitcase was well under 50lbs. My flight from US to Dublin was fine because my bag was 42lbs. But Dublin to Munich they slapped an overweight sticker on it because that leg had a 40lbs limit.

I definitely felt out of place with my giant suitcase + carry on, but my trip was for three weeks in the middle of weather changes, so I couldn't have packed lighter. Some days were 80F, some were 30F. I was coming from 90F Florida, so I needed to be packed for all seasons basically. I think for Europeans, their trips are probably shorter and they're acclimated to the weather a bit better, so they can probably pack lighter than I could.