Honestly, don’t expect to see THAT headline on a post on this site very often, but we do try to give credit where it is due, and Congress is, in fact, doing the right thing on a certain piece of legislation.
According to this AJC article, US Rep Daniel Lipinski (D-IL-3) has introduced HR 2870, which would order the FAA to restrict carry-on bags on airplanes to a size no bigger than 22 inches x 18 inches x 10 inches.
Apparently, this bill is a family affair as Lipinski’s dad, who once occupied Lipinski’s Congressional seat, also regularly introduced a version of this bill, with the blessing of flight attendant lobbyists. Lobbyists representing the airlines themselves are opposed to the bill.
As usual, it appears that this usurpation of Freedom is to make us ‘safer’ by reducing the risk of baggage falling out of overhead bins. Here’s the problem with that philosophy though: airlines already privately do what they feel is in the best interests of passenger safety, including imposing their own limits on the size of carry-ons and moving some carry-ons to the cargo compartment if the flight crew deems them too big once they get on the airplane itself.
This bill would strip the airlines and flight crews of their discretion and force a once-size-fits-all approach on everyone. One problem with this, other than those already mentioned, is that it limits competition among the airlines. In other words, it violates the free market. Different airlines have different airplanes in their fleets, similar to how different car rental places have different models of cars. If AirTran buys planes specifically because their carry-on racks are larger and therefore they can market this additional space as a reason people should fly with them, this bill would order AirTran to not use the additional space they paid for when they bought this model of plane. Because of this limitation, AirTran would probably stop buying this model of plane and buy the cheaper plane that its competitors use that has the smaller carry-on space.
So this bill favors certain airplane models over others, and due to this probably certain airplane manufacturers over others encroaching upon the free market even further and possibly costing people their jobs.
Further disturbing is Rep Lipinski’s spokesman’s statement that “You’ve got people lugging huge bags aboard taking up more than their fair share of space”. The only people who get to decide a person’s ‘fair share of space’ is are the consumer and the seller of the product the consumer is buying. If Bob Smith and Delta have agreed that his bag is acceptable on their plane, then it isn’t John Public’s right to decide otherwise – much less the Government’s.
Fortunately, this bill so far has zero co-sponsors and according to some ‘will not advance very far’.
