By Adam Dachis How to (Almost) Guarantee You'll Never Have to Check Your Luggage Again Checking your luggage is like gambling with your belongings. Something could break, get stolen, lost, and so on, and checked baggage generally comes with high fees. Here's how to almost guarantee you'll never have to check your luggage again and, if all plans fail, how to make the best of a bad situation. Make the Most of Your Two Carry-on Bags The easiest way to avoid the need to check your bags is to pack your bags efficiently. You may be surprised by how much you can fit with some smart techniques. Here's a look at af ew. Pack Well Most people check luggage for one of two reasons: 1) they're lazy and don't want to carry their bags to the terminal, or 2) they've got too much stuff. If you're lazy, get over it. Consider it exercise. If you've got too much stuff, that's generally a solvable problem. Most people can't manage two small bags because they don't pack efficiently. Taking some tips from a flight attendant, rolling your clothes saves a bunch of space and prevents wrinkles, too. Combine that with packing cubes and you'll have an incredibly well-organized and efficiently-packed suitcase. Leave Items Out - You Need Less Than You Think On top of packing well, you'll need to consider what you don't need. This is an obvious step, but figure out what's easy to leave behind based on where you're going. If you're heading to a friend's house or hotel with a guest laundry facility, you don't need as many clothes. You can also find a laundromat nearby and pay to wash clothing once. Obviously this is not the most fun thing to do on vacation, but you could even pay for the hotel to take care of it if you wanted. Check prices and compare them to the cost of your checked bags, because checking a bag (or two) on a round-trip flight could easily cost you more than a load of laundry. Avoid Packing Pitfalls and Figure Out Your Most Efficient Packing Strategy When making your decisions, you'll also want to figure out what belongs in which bag. Often times people will place the stuff they want to use on the plane in a backpack or purse and standard items in the overhead-bound suitcase. This makes sense in most cases, but you may find that you're grouping like items together. For example, you might toss your laptop charger in your backpack with your laptop, but you're probably not going to need it on the plane. It might fit better in your larger suitcase and could provide extra room to accommodate an extra pair of pants you planned to keep with your other clothing. The idea is simple: don't assume items belong in the same bag just because that bag contains similar items. Sometimes mixing and matching will lead to a better space-saving strategy. Ship Your Overages If you simply can't fit it all into one small suitcase and a personal bag, ship your excess items instead. Often times it is considerably cheaper than ridiculously high baggage fees (at least if you're checking more than one bag), plus you get the added benefit of insurance and better customer service. It might take longer, but if you're moving or bringing things you don't really need urgently you might as well just use FedEx or UPS instead. Overcome Common Carry-On Obstacles There are lots of ways your suitcase could get routed to the plane's cargo bay once you're already at the airport, but if you plan ahead you can avoid it. Here's how. Pack Items You're Not Really Supposed to Carry On In general, if you're trying to pack an item you're not supposed to take on the plane you should just not take it on the plane. There are times, however, where there are legitimate exceptions. For example, I once built a steadicam out of plumbing parts. While I'm not sure what this looked like to the TSA official checking my bag, I can imagine it looked like I was either planning on doing a little weightlifting on the plane or attacking the pilot with a series of lead pipes. I learned that day that the key to packing questionable items in your carry-on luggage is making them look a lot less questionable. In the case of the steadicam, the solution was to paint it and make it look like a professional product. It still caused confusion on the ride home, but since it didn't look like a plumber's torture kit I made it through just fine. Now we could talk about how a friend of mine snuck a broadsword on a plane, but that's the sort of thing you really just ought to ship via FedEx. The other semi-banned item is liquids, but that's easily solved by buying a few 4oz. bottles (they're less than one dollar each at most stores) and just transferring your liquids into those. You can pack more than 4oz. of liquids so long as you don't do it in excess and look suspicious. Just keep them separate from the others, label them differently, and you should get by just fine. The only time I've ever gotten called out for a liquid was when I forgot about an enormous water bottle and it had less than 4oz. left inside. The TSA is really looking for large bottles, not what's in them. Keep it small and you should be just fine. Avoid Last-Minute Bag Checks When the Overhead Bins Are Full If a flight attendant tells you the overhead bins are full and you'll have to check your bags at the end of the gate, they generally don't know this is surely the case. Because they don't want to end up with a ton of passengers on board with checked bags they can't accommodate, they take preemptive measures and just start checking bags in advance. The easiest way to get around this problem is to get your bag check tag and do one of two things. First, you can do the nice thing, wait until you get to the plane door, and ask the flight attendant designated to great you if they'd mind if you tried to see if there's still any room left on the plane. If there isn't any by the time you're at the door, they'll know and tell you for certain. If there is, your politeness will often be rewarded with the opportunity to find out. You might also want to mention that you think it'll fit under the seat if that is a possibility. Whatever you do, just don't offer an excuse for why you need to bring your bag on the plane. The flight attendant is going to already be in denial mode because s/he's been dealing with frustrated passengers. You're in the midst of a negotiation and providing a reason will give the him/her something to counteract. Normally just using the word because could help you in a situation like this, but your flight attendant will be prepared for a negotiation and you want to avoid justifications in a negotiation. In the event none of this works, there are a few more questionable methods that usually will. I've seen these work for people before, but you're pretty much guaranteed to be awarded a douche bag trophy as a result. Please have a very justifiable reason if you're going to follow any of these routes. First, the one excuse worth making is that you have a lot of important medication in your suitcase that you couldn't fit in your smaller, under-the-seat bag. If this is true, then by all means actually offer this as an excuse. If it's a lie, hope you don't get asked to prove it. Alternatively, you can throw a tantrum. One of the benefits of being in an enclosed space with lots of people is that making a scene draws a lot of negative attention. Nobody on the flight staff wants that to happen so you'll be dealt with as swiftly as possible. So long as you're only being obnoxious and not doing anything that will get you thrown off the plane, you should get what you want pretty quickly. Since shutting you up is the first priority of the flight staff, if you commit to your tantrum they'll soon realize that the quickest path to that result is giving you what you want. If storing your bag in the overhead is the only thing you're asking for, you'll probably get it. Just know that you'll have to live with the guilt of potentially forcing someone else to volunteer their bag to be check, and possibly incur the revenge of a passenger much like myself. Prepare for the Worst: When Checking Your Bags Is the Only Option If you absolutely have to check your bags, there are a few things you can do to help ensure their safety. Pack Like a Secret Agent While this may not be how secret agents actually pack—and secret agents probably don't check their bags either—it's a good way to remember these tips. First, if you're concerned about theft (and you should be), conceal your belongings. If you have an iPad sitting on top you're not helping you chances. Wrap it in clothing and pack it in the middle of the bag. Better yet, use the aforementioned packing cubes—seriously, they're awesome even for electronics and non-clothing items. And, of course, a secret agent wouldn't forget their gun. Yes, apparently packing a gun can ward off theft or bag loss because people won't want to mess with you. If the idea of owning or packing a gun freaks you out a little bit, a realistic fake could do the trick. It might be a little more trouble than it's worth at that point, but you can't be a bad ass secret agent without your (fake) firearm. Get Insured A lot of credit cards offer flight insurance if you simply book your flight using the card. If you don't know if you have this service, call up your credit card's bank and find out. Often times you can pay a monthly fee to add this service if it isn't available to you as a courtesy, or pay a one-time fee for every ticket you book. Often times this only costs you $15 which can be worth it if you're forced to check your bags. Some airlines will offer insurance as well, but the insurance through your credit card company will tend to be better if only because they can credit you your reimbursement much faster as it's going directly to your account. Got any other ways to avoid checking your bags (or dealing with those few times when you just can't get around it)? Share your strategies in the comments. You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.  Twitter's the best way to contact him, too. Share this:

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