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Dear Air Canada, you’re clamping down on the wrong behaviour

Dear Air Canada, you’re clamping down on the wrong behaviour

This week, anyone flying out of Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson Airport with Air Canada will want to pay special attention to their baggage, emotional and otherwise. The airline began issuing red tags to those passengers whose carry-on luggage conforms to the company’s size regulations. Every passenger is allowed one standard suitcase or bag measuring no more than 23 by 40 by 55 centimetres, and one personal item, like a backpack, laptop bag, or handbag. If your effects exceeds these limits, no tag for you. You’ll be asked to check the offending piece of luggage for a $25 fee.

When the crackdown announcement was made last week, it was met, predictably, with collective grumbling. The salvo represented a new turn in the so-called Carry-on Crisis that began last fall when the airline announced it would start charging for checked bags on domestic flights. (A fee had already been attached to international trips.)

Air Canada claims it’s clamping down on carry-on transgressions as a way to avoid flight delays caused by overstuffed bin debacles. But many believe that the airline is not as concerned about its schedules as it is about protecting its income from ancillary fees, which have become the fastest-growing source of revenue for most airlines. Chris Murray, an AltaCorp Capital analyst, tells Yahoo Canada News that his firm expects the airline will raise $50 million in luggage fees in its first year of the program, even though this is a period of adjustment and “passenger education.”

That’s a sum shareholders should find impressive. But we believe it’s also possible that Air Canada is leaving a lot of loonies on the table. Passengers might be happier to see many other types of behaviour banned and regulated by fees instead of, or in addition to, carry-on over-stowers.

If you’re going to rule with a stick, why not do it right.

Lost opportunities

According to a travel etiquette survey commissioned by Expedia last year, U.S. travellers find at least six other types of seatmates more annoying than carry-on sherpas. Assuming Canadian fliers have similar preferences, Air Canada might look to the following wrongdoers for their next set of fines:

1. Seat kickers. About 67% of respondents said the people who surprise-wallop from behind are the most obnoxious of all ill-mannered passengers.

2. Inattentive parents. The kids are screaming, the parents are on Ambien. In 2013, checked-out
guardians took the top spot on this list.

3. “Aromatic” passengers. A tight space is no place for body odor.

4. The audio insensitive. Headphones on, self-awareness off.

5. Boozers. (Often aromatic to boot.)

6. Chatty Cathy’s. Somehow found to be more aggravating than...

7. Carry-on baggage offenders. Only 39% of respondents named them as a regular annoyance.

8. Armrest hogs. Man-spreaders of the upper body.

9. Seat back assaulters. Those for whom the Knee Defender was created.

10. Queue jumpers. The impatient folks pushing to get off the plane with a win, place, or show.

Then again, the most despicable behaviour exhibited on airplanes is so unimaginable that it wouldn’t make a general survey. How much would you penalize someone who decides his heels are in need of debridement 30,000 feet in the air? What about the ultra Orthodox men who refuse to sit next to women? Or what of the many people who have no qualms about putting their feet on trays, or up the walls, of airplanes?

Photos of feet dangling in inappropriate places are surprisingly ubiquitous on Passenger Shaming, a site launched by a former flight attendant and fed by indignant airline users around the world.

Nudges might work

In all seriousness, it may be time for airlines to at least include etiquette brochures next to the safety cards in seat pockets, the way JetBlue once did. That company has since moved on to amusing video vignettes featuring actors from New York’s Upright Citizen’s Brigade.

Such a tactic could nudge Air Canada’s passengers to become courteous with their carry-ons and more gracious about checked luggage costs. In theory, a win-win.