Woman avoids paying extra baggage fees at the airport by packing more than five pounds of clothing
We all have our airport horror stories. Picture this: you’re at the airport, eagerly waiting to get through check-in and step aboard your flight. But there’s a hitch – the airline staff informs you that your luggage is slightly over the weight limit. Despite your hope they’d overlook it, fate isn’t on your side today. Pleading makes no difference. There’s no spare bag to offload a few items; the last thing you want is to pay that annoying extra fee. So, how do you outsmart this predicament? Take a page out of Gel Rodriguez’s book – improvise!
Rodriguez found herself in this exact situation at an airport in the Philippines. The weight limit for carry-on luggage was 15 pounds, but hers clocked in close to 20 pounds. When faced with the possibility of making a sizable extra fee, akin to highway robbery, in the aviation world, Rodriguez chose a different path. She wore over 5 pounds of her clothes to reduce her luggage weight.
She wore several T-shirts, jackets, and layers of jeans, which considerably reduced the weight of her suitcase. I wanted to avoid paying since the extra baggage weighed just approximately four and a half pounds. She shared in an interview. To commemorate her ingenuity, she snapped a photo and shared it on Facebook, where it quickly gained traction, receiving over 33,000 reactions and being shared more than 20,000 times. Fellow travelers hailed her inventiveness, with comments like “What a brilliant mind” and “Thank you for the idea” flooding in.
However, despite the viral fame and accolades, Rodriguez quickly cautioned others against following in her footsteps. “Maybe not. It was really hot. I don’t recommend other people do it,” she warned. This advice holds weight, as an incident from 2015 involving James McElvar from the Scottish boy band Rewind serves as a stern reminder. McElvar passed out due to heat exhaustion after trying to dodge excess luggage fees by wearing all his clothes. This led to a mistaken belief that he had suffered a heart attack.
So, while the creative solution may seem tempting, especially to those looking to avoid additional fees, the safer route is to pack wisely. It’s a gentle reminder that sometimes, prevention is better than cure – or, in this case, better than sweating it out in layers of clothing before a long flight!
Source: upworthy
