Best cabin luggage, tried and tested: Top cabin bags to shop for your flight
Whether escaping the UK for desperately-needed winter sun, counting down to an Easter spring fling or fantasising about the long-awaited summer getaway, the pre-holiday period is an exciting time.
It can be a stressful one too, especially if you loathe packing and leave it until the last minute (not naming any names). It doesn’t help that some airlines have introduced the concept of ‘free’ underseat cabin bags with pedantically differing requirements.
We won’t get into the sheer injustice (much) of having to fork out for a standard cabin bag when you’ve already paid for a seat that comes with a designated overhead compartment. Let’s just say it's a rankle that most of us - through gritted teeth - have had to accept to get to the prized sunlounger on the other side.
Low-budget airlines are notorious for implementing free bag rules, with staff patrolling boarding gates to uphold policies and issuing penalties to anyone who exceeds their limits.
What size cabin luggage am I allowed?
The problem is that each carrier has different rules, so it can be challenging to know what bag to pack - especially if your return journey is with a different airline to the outbound. It’s all too easy to get caught out and land yourself a penalty (the holiday souvenir no one wants), a sum that’s sometimes more than the cost of the flight itself.
To protect your holiday fund against being wasted on baggage fees, we’ve listed the free bag dimensions for popular budget carriers like Ryanair, easyJet, WizzAir and Jet2.
Our list also includes cabin bag sizes for
