Hello from Helsinki. It’s a rainy day here in the capital and we are at the end of a two-week whirlwind adventure through Finland.
This week’s question: Tell us about your last airline luggage disaster! I’d love to hear your tales of surprise luggage fees, emergency repacking, and evading the luggage police. We’ll share our tips for avoiding luggage fees in the podcast.
The distinctive architecture of Turku Castle in Turku, Finland. Many Americans miss this coastal city and the archipelago, a collection of 40,000 islands in the Baltic. Aren and I met up with our friend Heli to do yoga on Sunday morning in the castle.
One of the great summertime traditions in Finland is foraging for mushrooms. That’s Sami Tallberg, a famous chef and author who taught us how to pick the right mushrooms and prepare them while we were at Billnäs Gård.
Root vegetables for sale at the market in Turku. I dream of coming back and shopping at this market every morning for food. I’ve never seen such a variety of carrots!
This is Iden Elliott’s luggage in Hobart, Australia, just before he boarded a Virgin Australia flight to Melbourne. I thought were going to have to leave one of our bags behind, but remarkably, they allowed us to board the plane even with a little extra.
We’ll have more tips on how to avoid paying high luggage fees in this podcast.
Don’t forget this week’s question: Tell us about your airline luggage disasters. And bonus question: How do you avoid overpaying for your bags (or having to abandon them).
this does NOT qualify as a disaster, only an annoyance. When flying JetBlue to Boston a few weeks ago, I had a carryon and a personal item, backpack. I realized that my phone with boarding pass was inside my tiny purse, inside my backpack, so I pulled it out to register my boarding pass, then just slung the purse over my shoulder to quickly proceed. The agent stopped me and said, you will have to return the purse into your backpack! I said -- "well, it just came out of there, there is obviously room, can't I just proceed in order to speed things up and I will put it back onboard? " NO! she replied. So of course, I'm now fumbling with the stress and slowed up everyone behind me while I complied. What happened to good old common sense?
Understand the stress. But JetBlue is the ONLY carrier to limit two carry ons! Too many carriers vocally say one carry on bag and a personal item, purse, briefcase, backpack. But all too frequently, the purse is the size of a carry on, and the backpack is the size of a steel frame hiking unit.
Would be nice to have TSA step up and limit at security for all!
Oh, I had something like this happen a few months ago. Had a few little things in a tiny sling bag, so I could have my ID and boarding pass handy, and not be digging around in my tote bag. Same thing, grumpy gate agent made me step aside until I had put the tiny sling bag in the tote bag.
Never had one yet, not a fee, and yes I am almost always overpacked on the way home 🤣🤣🤣
Oh, Helsinki! Favorite city in the world. (So far). First visit, 15 years ago, we had a university apartment just around the corner from where Hotel Maria is now, on Maneesikatu. Have stayed all over the city over about 10 visits, but favorite airbnb is in Katajanokka. Gorgeous area, great architecture. We’re usually in Finland this time of year for an amazing classical music festival in Lahti, celebrating the music of Finland’s own Jean Sibelius. In Helsinki, don’t miss Cafe Regatta for a lovely outdoor setting with great coffee and delicious korvapuusti. And Restaurant Purpur serves terrific Georgian food. Seems to be quite a few Georgian restaurants in Helsinki these days.
Lugggage story, flying Heathrow to Helsinki. I had a very heavy laptop and other gear in my carryon. Check in clerk made me repack. I put the heavy stuff in a tote bag over my shoulder. Same amount of weight, differently distributed. I was baffled by her approval of that strategy and asked if I could redistribute it after security. She quite rudely said “I don’t care what you do after you go through security.” Bizarre one!
I was flying from San Francisco to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines, using United miles. I had to change planes in Paris and I had a checked bag, which is free with Unitd Mileage Plus. When I got to Paris, Turkish Airline tired to make me pay 200 Euros for a chekced bag. They were soing this to another passenger as well. I speak flunet Frnch so I was able to argue and they did nit charge me. Turkish Airlins is a Star Allaince member, so they should not be doing this.
A couple of stories:
1. Trying to fly from Toronto to Detroit; I had a checked bag because my wife and I were coming off of vacation and I had work in Detroit. Anyway, due to heavy thunderstorms, my flight was cancelled; the alternate flights would not work, so I ended up driving from Toronto to Detroit. The checked bag found me a few days later.
2. Not a disaster: I did some work in California and was given a bottle of wine. I went to UPS to ship the wine-they wouldn't do it. I went to Fed-Ex and they said they had to have a liquor license to ship alcohol but was willing to take the wine off my hands. They did give me some bubble wrap, so I wrapped the wine with the bubble wrap and some shirts and ended up checking my bag with the wine in it (usually that bag was my roll-on). Cost me $25 to get that wine home--but it was good.
Because of a delay in Phoenix I missed my connection in Heathrow to Cairo. They found me another flight through Istanbul that got me in to Cairo the next morning in time to take a planned tour. However, my luggage never made the connection. My air tag told me it arrived the next day so they sent someone to retrieve it but they said it wasn’t there. I said “But my AirTag says it arrived at the Cairo Airport.” I guess they never heard of an AirTag and didn’t believe me. After 5 days of me insisting it was there they tried a different terminal and Voila! There it was!