Carry-On Luggage Politics

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Airlines are mad at you.  You don’t understand that the plane has feelings.  It cannot fly if it is heavy, with y’all having 20 kg bags as carry-on luggage.
I stopped flying myself because of airport security and all that jazz of taking off my clothes in public, but I miss the drama about luggage. 
My favourite is watching travellers on the floor, removing items from bags because they are over the weight limit.  What I like is that most of the time the contents look like a second hand store clothes’ bin.
They were just shoved in, not packed nicely like T-shirts in a Donna Karan store.  Please don’t take it personally.  I’m just making conversation.
Anyway, carry-on luggage needs someone who is good with figures.  Centimetres.  Inches.  It is all Greek to me.  This is important because airlines have certain specifications for carry-on luggage.  Let’s say 53 cm x 23 cm x 38 cm, like West Jet.
Photo:  Nonqaba waka Msimang, infrequent flyer.
I think airlines want you to take a fashion designer’s tape and measure the bag you will take on the plane with you.  You measure it up, down and on the side.  I don’t want to use fancy words like length or width.
Numbers drive me crazy.  That is why I concentrate on the weight.  Does the airline allow 10 or 8 kg?  No problem.  I put my bag on the bathroom scale, to avoid embarrassment at the check-in counter.
It is a cop-out for airlines to be blaming us for going over carry-on luggage weight limits.  They used to lose our luggage. 
I am going to Switzerland to catch some summer jazz, and my bags detour to Franklin Manitoba.  That is why folks try and cram everything into the bag they will take on the plane with them.
The best solution for carry-on luggage is deportation.  I commit a crime in one country.  They find me guilty.  They discover that my visitor’s or student visa has expired. 
They take me straight to the airport and send me back to my country, without a toothbrush, let alone clean underwear most mothers recommend.
‘Anything to declare maa’m?’
‘Just myself.’

Nonqaba waka Msimang is in the infrequent flyer programme of most airlines.

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