Overhead Bin Brawl: Are You Breaking The Rules When You Stash Personal Items Above Your Seat?

Overhead Bin Brawl: Are You Breaking The Rules When You Stash Personal Items Above Your Seat?


Overhead Bin Brawl: Are You Breaking The Rules When You Stash Personal Items Above Your Seat?

Personal item goes underneath the seat in front of you, and full-sized carry on bag goes in the overhead bin – unless you’re seated at a bulkhead with no underseat storage, in which case both go in the bin, ideally above your seat.

But what if you have only one item?

  • Does personal item have to go under the seat in front of you?
  • Or is the unwritten rule that you get one item in the bin, and it’s the second item you have to put underneath the seat?

In other words, if you have just a backpack or laptop bag and no full-sized carry on, can you put that in the overhead bin? (And for that matter, if you have two items, can both actually go in the bin if you want?)

Last week a passenger flying United from Denver to Houston pulled someone’s backpack out of the overhead bin in order to make space for their rollaboard.

  • The backpack owner “yelled at him to put it back and they got in an argument.”
  • The passenger with the rollaboard “said [the] backpack needs to go under the seat.”
  • Surrounding passengers joined in the argument – backing up the passenger that moved the backpack out of the bin.

It turns out that the man with the backpack had a personal item under his seat (“looked like a briefcase”) so this was his larger carry-on item and they wouldn’t both fit. Oops.

roller guy was speechless and walked away with his suitcase to the back. i think he ended up having to gate check.

If you board late in the process then there’s a good chance you’ll have to gate check your bags. That’s part of not having early boarding, or not boarding when your earlier group is called. Since airlines charge for checked bags, and planes are mostly full, overhead bins fill up quickly – even where airlines install larger bins. (Southwest, which includes two free checked bags with each ticket, has problems with this less frequently than others.)

And while there are basic expectations and social norms around use of the overhead bin, it also violates a strong norm to move other peoples’ stuff. Besides they might need the extra room underneath the seat in front of them for a medical reason that isn’t obvious, so don’t be presumptuous that the person placing a carry on and personal item above their seat is being a jerk.

Following Delta’s lead, United and American have labeled bins showing the cabin they’re supposed to be saved for. That way, in theory, a first class passenger getting onto a flight later in boarding might still have space. These bin labels are rarely enforced.

At the end of the day overhead bin space is first-come, first-served. The polite thing to do is to place your personal item under the seat in front of you. Flight attendants often announce this instruction. But there’s often little enforcement – and taking matters into your own hands often won’t end well.



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