UAE-India flights: Will airlines implement new cabin baggage rules soon?
The cabin bag regulations on Indian airlines will start very soon and the travel agents in UAE have been urging their clients to follow it.
India’s Bureau of Civil Aviation Security has made changes in cabin baggage rules to limit cabin luggage to a single item and keep it below 7kg for all international domestic flights, Indian media reported on Wednesday.
"This has been circulated and Airlines are also making these rules as soon as possible as per the news we have got," said Safeer Mahamood, General Manager of Smart Travels. "It will be applicable to all international and domestic flights of Indian airlines so it is something which passengers coming from UAE must remember," he said.
But a third professional pointed out that no official announcement has been made on the issue, and he was expecting the rules to be slapped on the books soon. "We have not heard from airlines," Praveen Chowdhary of Saffron Travels and Tourism said. "But we have been messaging all our passengers, telling them the exact size and weight of cabin carry-on bags that every airline is allowing. We’ve also been telling them to play by the rules."
Minimal impact
This move will have no real impact on the passenger, according to all experts, as most airlines have already been doing this since before the circular was issued. "These are practices already done by the majority of the airlines for some time now, so it will be very little to impact our customers," said Ramy Badr, sales manager at Dopamine Travels.
And, says Praveen, cabin baggage weight is something he’s been telling his clients to watch out for. "Every airline will let a laptop bag in along with the cabin baggage," he said. "But before you didn’t weigh the laptop bag. We’re getting flights to weigh only laptops and not cabin bags now. So we’ve been saying to our passengers, weigh both bags and try to limit your luggage to 7kg or else you have to pay extra for it.
‘The people at risk would be individuals who frequently have several packs on board the plane,’ Safeer continued. ‘You have people who bring in their laptop bag, their backpack and then plastic bags,’ he said. These activities will be restricted once the new regulations take effect." Mr. Ghazi.
He said it is quite likely that airlines will also start to ban cabin baggage tags. ‘We are looking at airlines to be very tight on how many cabin baggage tags they issue and not letting any baggage onto the plane without the tags.
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