Where this sits on the trip
- Stage 1Packing at Home
How much it holds
- Stage 2The Front Door
What it weighs when you pick it up
- Stage 3The Gate Sizer
Whether the whole object fits a metal frame
- Stage 4The Overhead Bin
Whether it shares a bin without a fight
- Stage 5The Baggage Belt
What survives a chute, a stack and a belt
- Stage 6The Hotel Room
Whether it opens flat in a small room
The Overhead Bin
Does it fit beside somebody else?
What this stage asks
The bin is the first test where the bag is not judged alone. It is judged against whatever is already in there, and against whatever arrives after it. The question stops being how big is this and becomes what shape is this, and will it give.
A rigid shell wins the previous test and often loses this one. Inside a frame, rigidity is an advantage: the case holds its measured shape and goes in. Inside a full bin, rigidity is the reason a case will not slide the last four centimeters past a neighbor who packed a soft bag.
Twelve of the forty-seven listings say whether the shell is rigid or soft. That is a real answer to a real question, and it is the only part of this test any listing addresses. Everything else about the bin, including the fact that bins differ enormously between aircraft, is absent from every listing here.
What the listings answer
Counted from the 47 listings gathered on this site.
- Nine carry-on listings state a shell type, eight of them hard and one soft, and three of those name the polymer.
- Three checked listings state a shell type as well, one of them naming polypropylene.
- Several duffel listings state foldable or packable construction, which is an honest statement about shape: a bag that folds is a bag with no shape of its own.
- One backpack listing states expandable construction, which is the same information in the opposite direction: the shape changes according to how much you have put in.
What nobody states
Not a shortlist of the vague ones. These are figures that appear on no listing in the catalog at all.
- Not statedHow the bag behaves when it is compressed from the side, which is exactly what happens in a full bin.
- Not statedWhether the case has a fixed side handle that stops it lying flat, which is one of the more common reasons a bag will not go in wheels-first.
- Not statedThe depth of the bag when it is packed full, as opposed to the depth of the empty shell.
- Not statedAnything at all about aircraft bins, which vary by aircraft type and by row and are not something any luggage listing can speak to.
Worth being careful about
- A soft bag has no fixed external size. What it measures depends on how hard it was packed, and a full soft bag can measure more than a rigid case of the same nominal size.
- Bin space is shared and finite. Nothing about a bag can guarantee a place in it, and no listing here claims otherwise.
- Where a listing states a size, that figure is the body of the bag and not the packed object with handles and feet.
- We make no claims about lifting a bag overhead. How you get a bag into a bin is between you and the bag.
A stated size is the size of the body. Wheels, feet and an extended telescoping handle are not usually counted inside it, and the frame at a gate counts all of them.
Where to read next
The numbers behind this stage
Where it shows up in the catalog