[nickaryn]

My husband and I were on a flight on July 26, 2010 from San Francisco to Milwaukee and were traveling with four children. Two of our kids are little and weren't able to carry on their two allowed pieces, so the last person in our group was carrying an extra piece of luggage. The flight attendant, Peggy, wasn't able to keep track of the count (ie: unable to count to 11) and we were told that because she lost count she would have to take the last carry-on and check it in. What? We purposely didn't check any luggage in because our flight was arriving at 10 pm and my husband had to work the next morning, and we didn't want to spend any extra time waiting at baggage claim. Now we would have to waste our time waiting to retrieve that ONE piece of luggage. I tried telling the flight attendant that we had X amount of people in our group and were allowed X amount of carry-ons, but she rudely said, "move along, keep walking, thanks for understanding". After we were seated, my husband went back and tried explaining that we were well within the allowable baggage count and that we wanted our luggage back. He was told there was nothing she could do, despite the fact that the luggage was within reach of my husband and the flight was not full. Needless to say, my son's asthma inhaler and other necessary items were in that confiscated carry-on. So now we are at our final destination, Milwaukee, and we go to baggage claim and of course, our luggage is not there. We then spend another 45 minutes at the Southwest office trying to track and locate our ONE piece of luggage to no avail. 26 hours later our ONE piece of luggage is delivered to our home. I start making calls to "customer relations" and after 10+ attempts of talking to the wrong people, busy signals, waiting and getting disconnected, etc., I finally get through the next day. I reiterate my story to the representative via a 16 minute one-sided conversation, and was told there was nothing they could do and offered me a very insincere and unapologetic quasi-apology and gave me a piece of advice..."next time tell the ticket agent that you have kids who can't carry luggage and that this person and this person will be carrying extra". What? Moral of the story? Don't fly on Southwest. If you do, load up your pockets with whatever you may need for the next day or two.

[The_Judge]

Actually, with 6 people you are allowed 6 carryons plus a purse, laptop or briefcase for each person. Just to clarify.

[nickaryn]

Thank you for your clarification, The Judge. My purse, my five year old's little purse, camera bag, briefcase with laptop, husband's cpap machine, son's bag of popcorn, other daughter's wristlet, etc. were included in the total count of 11. Just to further clarify, we weren't toting 11 suitcases on the plane.

[mars6423]

i am not a big fan of when people bring so many bags onboard unless they put some stuff under the seat in front of them, otherwise it is taking up compartment room for the other passengers as so much space is taken up already, especially if they only have one bag and they are made to gate check it

i understand there are all these fees and it would get expensive, but thats why you can gate check the bags for free if they (the airline) feel that there is going to be an issue

i know that you only had one bag taken for gate check and you brought all the bags on for convenience but you also have to see the side of other passengers who may also want to use the overhead bins, they should be allowed to use it too.......and if there is no space then i would agree with the action the airline took by removing one of your bags for another passengers as even though you were within the limit, it still wouldn't be fair for the other passenger who may have had 1, 11bags to 1 i would always find room for that 1 somehow even if it means taking 1 of the 11 bags away

you should have asked and told the FA's that you need to get your child's medicine and essentials and i am sure they would have let you get it

here is a quick story of what happened to a flight i was on earlier this year to Utah for skiing

The flight was not full but everyone wanted to bring their ski equip. with them and a carry on, and the overhead bins were filled up quickly and there were people who shoved several bags up top with jackets, and people were told to take the jackets down and so on, as the plane was filling up and all the bins were full people were asked to remove one of their bags and put it under the seat or it had to be gate checked and people were complaining and saying that it isn't fair and had the self-important mentality of i can do whatever i want, so in the end the FA's had to remove some of the bags and gate check them

is this fair? in my opinion yes, everyone should be allowed ONE carryon and then if there is room a 2nd carry on and the others would be gate checked