Airlines Are Finally Adding Enough Overhead Bin Space for All Carry-Ons. What Took So Long?

09.02.2024 - 23:53 / afar.com / Airlines / Long

When airlines introduce shiny new or refurbished aircraft, they tend to tout the updated amenities, like new seatback screens, Bluetooth connectivity, or self-serve snack bars. While those are welcome benefits, let’s be honest—many of these newfangled features are meant to distract us from the extra rows of seats the carriers crammed onto the plane.

However, one of the cabin enhancements that benefits both the flying public and the airlines is revamped overhead bins. The latest next-generation compartments are larger than their predecessors and can typically hold the vast majority of onboard carry-on bags, even on fully booked flights—often by standing roller bags upright on their side, versus laying them flat on their back. It’s an innovation that stands to improve one major pain point of air travel.

After all, for years travelers in the United States have been fighting both fellow passengers and airlines (need we mention bag sizers at the gate?) for the right to store their carry-ons onboard. That begs this question: How did we, as a society, get to a place where our carry-on luggage didn’t fit in the overhead bins? And why have airlines made us play an intense game of luggage Tetris with our seatmates for all of these years?

The necessity for more carry-on capacity is, at its core, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jostling for overhead bin space and gate-checking bags became the proverbial norm less than two decades ago. It’s easy to pinpoint exactly when it all went wrong. It was 2008, amid the Great Recession, when the major U.S. airlines—in a bid to stay afloat financially—began charging customers for their first checked bag (among other ancillary fees).

From more bin space to fancy lighting features, the entire United flying experience gets an upgrade on the carrier’s new Airbus A321neo planes.

Courtesy of Wayne Slezak/United Airlines

To avoid paying to place bags in the cargo hold, passengers brought everything but the kitchen sink into the cabin. This commenced an era, that continues, of passengers fighting to fit their carry-ons into overhead bins.

With more bags in the cabin than ever before, airlines had to deal with yet another problem: lack of space to fit it all. Gate checking came into play, which required passengers to hand over their carry-on to be stowed away, not to be seen again until they disembarked from the plane or, worse, collected their carry-ons at baggage claim at the final destination—forcing fliers to suffer through the endless wait at the baggage carousel.

Fast-forward to today. The spectacle of gate checking isn’t despised by just passengers; airlines hate it too. That’s because checking bags at the gate often slows the boarding process. When customers find out at the last