It's a small phenomenon on social networks.
Travelers – often young – film themselves with two or three layers of clothing before getting on the plane – each time belonging to a low-cost company.
Others share their tricks such as putting a bag on your stomach, to cover it with a sweatshirt and go through boarding discreetly... The scheme always has the same objective: to circumvent the new baggage rules imposed by companies, which are ever more strict, and pay less for their trip.
Chloé, 26, did not try to free herself from it.
But she reacted accordingly, when she left for Poland in June with Ryanair, from Beauvais airport, with only a small backpack as luggage, "otherwise it was not profitable to have taken a cheap ticket.
"As it was summer, I didn't need to take very bulky things," she says.
The young woman therefore contented herself with slipping three t-shirts and jeans into her backpack for her week's vacation, all stored “in the manner of Marie Kondo, rolled up rather than folded”.
There, she washed her clothes in the hotel sink before drying them.
Not cooled by her experience, she will do the same thing again, in June, for a week's vacation in Hungary.
At Ryanair, the rule is not new: the low-cost airline was even the first, in 2018, to remove cabin baggage, as part of its cheapest ticket.
Since then, the company has banned large bags and suitcases of "standard" size, except for passengers who pay a supplement for the "Regular" option.
But the latter makes the price of the ticket jump: more than 20 additional euros for a Paris-Krakow on April 30, while the ticket is sold at 63.59 euros without cabin baggage.
This strategy has since taken off.
According to a survey carried out by Le Parisien, at least three other companies out of the twenty analyzed charge for cabin baggage (but it is still possible to have a small bag, generally the size of a classic backpack).
EasyJet, WizzAir and even Eurowings have adopted this model.
All have one similarity: they are low cost and offer trips over short distances.
“When they charged for checked baggage, people only took cabin baggage, but there is no room for all passengers,” explains Paul Chiambaretto, associate professor of strategy and marketing at Montpellier Business. School, a specialist in airline economics.
It also takes longer to board and disembark with cabin baggage, so it caused delays and they could make fewer flights during the day.
The strategy therefore finds recipe: by making them pay or by encouraging passengers to travel light.
Checked baggage is no longer automatic
More recently, more “classic” companies have started doing it.
They have not (yet?) tackled baggage in the cabin, concentrating their efforts for the moment on those in the hold.
Thus, at Air France, checked baggage is no longer included in the cheapest ticket.
For a Paris-Montreal on April 30, you have to pay 242 euros this Friday to put your luggage in the hold, when the price is 177 euros without this possibility.
The system developed very quickly: Air Caraïbes, TAP Air Portugal, Corsair, American Airlines and Level adopted it.
How to explain it?
“It's a fairly old trend, which dates back to the 1990s and 2000s, which consists of breaking down the plane ticket by selling à la carte services,” explains Paul Chiambaretto.
This phenomenon has been boosted by the arrival of low cost – which have made it their business – but above all by the arrival of travel comparators, which cannot (or do so poorly) take into account whether there are luggage included in the ticket price.
Result ?
It is the companies that do not offer any luggage, either in the cabin or in the hold, which always come out on top.
“When we look in detail, in the weeks preceding a flight, we realize that the price of the plane ticket is more or less equivalent if we add luggage”, notes Paul Chiambaretto.
But the expert remarked: “When we spent 15 to 20 minutes on a website, there is a form of commitment and therefore we are not going to give up because the price has increased.
The situation could change in the coming years: the International Air Transport Association has been working for several years on a new standard that would allow passengers to have a price corresponding to the options they want directly.