Edit: New readers to the topic can read the tales of woe and anger from the beginning, or join the topic in August 2022 by clicking here.
Another disgraceful Jetstar incident.
Just another reminder why we avoid Jetstar like the plague. It is the worst airline that we have ever experienced.
Jetstar strikes again.
https://celebrity.nine.com.au/2019/02/18/13/45/sam-wood-jetstar-rant-after-flight-cancellation
My wife flew with Jetstar today and whilst we were waiting for the boarding gate to open, Jetstar employees were busily moving around the queue of waiting passengers with a portable scale on wheels and weighing all the carry-on items that looked likely to be over their miserable limits.
To my absolute amazement. they were even weighing womenâs handbags as well as other small items.
They managed to intercept around half a dozen couples whilst I was there and they proceeded to rip them off with a portable EFTPOS terminal.
The persons were not happy and an overseas visitor couple were very irate, particularly as they had already paid for extra carry-on baggage.
This grubby gouging for a few extra dollars comes on top of Jetstar reducing their checked baggage limit to a paltry 20kg.
They most certainly deserve their nickname âSâŠtstarâ.
Weighing handbags? What a shocker. If anyone else has had similar experiences, please share them here. Iâll be sure to add this to our Shonky watchlist.
Old news! It is pretty low how low they will go, but people keep buying cheap tickets. Ryanair demonstrates an airline can do almost anything to their customers so long as their tickets are cheap enough.
Noting QF has abandoned or all but abandoned some routes to Jetstar, so it is not as if there is any choice (no pun intended) in the matter.
There are some airports and airlines where they also weigh the passengers!
Although in that instance it is genuinely about safety and being able to take off at altitude! The only penalty though is if you are on the skinny side of average you are at a greater risk of being seated to the rear of the plane so as to minimise issues with balance once off the ground. I do recollect at least one instance where the flight left without all the booked load of passengers too! Perhaps being on the lighter side helped.
For airlines such as Jetstar there is potentially a much more significant cost impact through variation in passenger weight. It would be discriminatory to do so?
Weighing smaller hand held items in comparison appears very petty and not a genuine safety need, given Jetstar has reduced itâs total carry on allowances to next to zero. With 7kg in total it is not much more than a laptop and change of socks in a lightweight zipper bag.
The Jetstar carry on rules indicate that handbags fit into the small items category, and thus make up the carry on baggage weight limit (the total weight allowable is dependent on the fare class bought):
I suspect that handbags have been added to the allowance as some handbags are huge (like tote bags or similar often used as a handbag) or contain things for every cosmetic and travelling emergency, making the bag weighty.
Some items that you could carry in a handbag could be extremely heavy. A gold ingot, a lump of lead, bags of gemstones and gold or platinum jewellery, lots of coins are some items that domestically could be weighty beyond normal items but permitted by aviation rules.
I would stick these in my pockets rather than a handbagâŠthus also removing them fro potential weigh ins by an airline.
This reminds me of a passenger ahead of us on a check in line in AsiaâŠwhere the passengerâs luggage must have been very heavy and rejected by the airline/subject to additional luggage charges. The passenger opened the suitcase and put on a few extra layers of clothes, then a heavy jacket, closed up the suitcase and was then accepted by the check in clerk. I always wondered if the bag exceeded the maximum individual bag weight (for WPH&S reasons) or because it exceeded the luggage allowance. If it was the later, doing such is a little farcical as it made no difference to the total weight of the aircraft, allowing the passenger to avoid additional chargesâŠ
What I witnessed yesterday were small handbags which were obviously not heavy.
It was nothing more than a petty money-gouging exercise.
We normally avoid Jetstar like the plague but one of our daughters booked the ffight.
@Fred123 I wasnât making light of that issue but even a smallish handbag with some ingots in it could help exceed weight allowances easily. Weighing items just for revenue not because they are drastically over-weight is poor customer service. Extra weight does cost more fuel and a plane full of over weight carry on could affect the cost of that flight but some discretion should be used if the weight is not too far out of bounds.
If they weigh one, they probably have to weigh them all. it is just how it is to avoid charges of âpicking on meâ or discrimination.
Weigh them sure but if they charge high fees for even just slight out of bounds on carry on it seems a bit greedy. I canât say that they did do this but just if it hadâŠ
I suspect their work rules are to allow no more than the next tick on the analogue scale to allow for reading error (which would be better PR than a digital scale). It is the only way they can avoid other accusations such as favouritism. Fred, which type were they using? If âyouâ publish a weight-fee schedule, you have to abandon it or enforce it as a matter of customer relations. Most customers wonât whinge (or whinge too much) as long as something is applied consistently.
It was a digital scale.
They were not weighing all passengers bags and handbags, only those whose bags looked like they might go over the limit and they then insisted that the add their handbags and anything else they were carring on top of the bags.
I think your original comments may have been too kind to them!
Another disgusting incident by Jetstarâs parent company.
I have mixed feeling about this one and can see where Qantas is coming from. If they allow any dog claimed to provide some sort of support (health, disability, moral etc) onto a plane without adequate substantiation and evidence of the claims, then it is likely that anyone with a dog would claim travel within the passenger compartment.
For others like me, where dogs is a trigger for hayfever, I would like to ensure that any dog is definitely needed for medical, disability etc reasons. I would be happy to suffer the consequences of a hayfever bout in such cases.
One also has the responsibility to ensure that ones own support animal meets the required legislation/regulations for aircraft compartment travel. It appears from the article that the lady in question may not have followed or being aware of such requirements.
And another disgraceful Jetstar incident .
What a bunch of incompetent grubs.
