This woman got around the baggage fee in style!
An airline passenger got creative to avoid paying extra luggage for a flight.
Instead of carrying additional baggage, the traveler decided to wear it. The woman was layered with at least 10 pieces of clothing.
The creative passenger Gel Rodriguez, from the Philippines, wore 2.5 kilograms(5.5 lbs) of her clothes.
No, she wasn’t just playing it cool. Her carry-on luggage exceeded the maximum weight of seven kilos(15.4 lbs), so she had to do something about it.
The airport staff warned Rodrigues that her suitcase was overweight. Usually, in these situations, people pay extra fee and get on the flight. Not this woman. She refused to pay extra. In a Facebook post she described the situation:
“When the airline staff at the check-in counter said: “Only seven kilos is allowed in hand luggage”.
Me: “No problem”.“
Refusing to pay the additional fee, this clever traveler did the impossible. She turned her luggage weight from nine kilos(19.8 lbs) to just six and a half(14.3 lbs) in no time.
How did she do that? The creative passenger layered herself with multiple t-shirts, pants, and jackets.
On the photo, we can see how proud Gel is of her little luggage hack. She is wearing about five different t-shirts, three or four pairs of pants, and three jackets. The creative traveler also wrote: “From 9kg to 6.5kg baggage.” and added the hashtag: #ExcessBaggageChallengeAccepted. So, she’s not only clever but quite funny too.
In an interview for VICE she says:
“I didn’t want to pay the fee for the excess baggage because it was only two kilograms (4.4 lbs).”
Although this creative act saved Gel from paying extra money, she would never attempt to layer so many pieces of clothing on herself again.
She confesses it was really hot and she wouldn’t recommend this to others. She also laughs about her pose in the picture. Maybe if she knew this post would go viral, she would have thought of a better pose.
Many people related to her story and were inspired by her tricky act. A few even shared they have done this hack before to avoid the extra charge.