Continental Airlines, you can take your $20 baggage fee and pound sand.
I'm at IAH and headed towards security. I traveled light taking only my Samsonite carry-on. Now, this is the freaking standard rolling bag that like 97% of people who fly own. In a real plane you can get like three of these in an overhead bin (I was on an Embraer 145 for this flight so I knew the bag would need to be gate-checked). The guy ahead of my has a similar sized bag. As he walks up to the entrance to the security roped off area a pair of Continental employees step up and ask him to put his bag into the little "Does your bag fit here?" thingys. He places it there, and with the tiniest bit of effort, I'm talking he gives it the same push you'd have to give a bag to put it into an overhead bin, it goes right in.
The Continental person tells him he'll need to check it because it's too large.
I'm dumbfounded. I've seen, literally, thousands of people with the same bag do the same thing and never have a single issue. I look at my bag and realize there is no way I'll get mine through there. I got clothing for Christmas and it made my bag slightly larger than when I left Eau Claire. So I head to check my bag, not very happy but it's not a fight I have a chance of winning.
$20.
Twenty freaking dollars.
It all made sense to me the moment I saw that. The airline had people posted there to make anyone who could have possibly had a bag even a fraction of an inch too large for the little bin-guide to make them give $20 for each bag. I can't imagine how many people this screwed over. A family of four could easily see an extra $40-80 in fees for their trip.
I don't care if I need to fly through Denver and Vegas to get to Houston from Minneapolis. I'm flying Southwest.
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