What's Really the Best Way to Pack: Carry-On, Checked, Duffel, or Suitcase?

Should you travel with a carry-on or check a bag? Is a hard-sided suitcase better than a soft-sided one or a duffel bag? In this episode of Talk Travel to Me, host Kristy Ouellette breaks down FAA baggage regulations, weight limits, and why summer weather in Florida completely changed her luggage philosophy. Plus, she shares a special behind-the-scenes update on her recent guest appearance on Emily Aborn's podcast, Small Business Casual.

Key Takeaways:

1. Carry-On is King for Layovers and Summer Florida Travel: Severe summer thunderstorms and ground lightning stops in Florida can leave checked luggage sitting out in the rain or trapped on the tarmac for hours. Opting for a carry-on prevents these delays and keeps your belongings dry.
2. Hard-Sided Luggage Offers Crucial Weather Protection: Soft-sided luggage can absorb vast amounts of water during unexpected airport downpours, soaking everything inside. Switching to hard-sided suitcases ensures your clothes and souvenirs remain secure and protected from moisture.
3. Maximize Packing Space Wisely: Utilize tight clothing rolls, compression packing cubes, or vacuum bags (best for carry-ons since they reduce volume but not weight) to maximize your allowance without risking expensive overweight fees.

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Transcript

[00:00] Intro: Ready for your fast pass to the perfect vacation? This is Talk Travel to Me. Join host Kristy Ouellette and the Mickey Guru team for one big travel question every episode. Solo insights or expert roundtables all with a sprinkle of magic and the ultimate insider edge. Fasten your seatbelt, it's time to talk travel.

[00:26] Kristy: Hey traveler, welcome back to Talk Travel to Me. This week I'm answering the question, what's really the best way to pack? Carry-on? Checked bag? Duffel? Suitcase? This week's question is from my friend and fellow podcaster Emily Aborn. She's heading out on a trip soon and was unsure of the best way to handle the luggage situation. So Emily, this one's for you. Let's talk about it.

[00:50] Kristy: Alright, before we get started, let's do a little bit of an overview of the definitions because if you're not a frequent traveler, you may not know this. The FAA allows you as an individual person to bring two things on board the aircraft with you. One is a personal item. So think about a purse, small backpack, small duffel bag. It's going to fit under the seat in front of you in order to be considered a personal item. The other option, or the other second thing that you could bring is a carry-on bag. Now that is something that would go above your seat in the overhead containers. And so there are very strict size limitations depending on the airline and the aircraft. But generally that could be a roller bag, it could be a duffel bag, but there are very specific height pieces. One little caveat I want to throw out there is if you have medical devices such as a breast pump or an oxygen pump, any medical devices, they don't count towards your allotment. But for a typical flight we're looking at, those two things that the FAA will allow you to bring on.

[02:03] Kristy: Okay, so now we have checked bags. Now checked bags, the sizes are pretty uniform across domestic carriers. But what is allowed for weight can be different. For example, some airlines like Southwest allow up to 50 pounds. If you go to 50 pounds point 2 ounces, you're going to pay an overweight fee. That happened to me on Hawaiian Airlines back in 2015, and I was frantically at the gate trying to unpack some stuff, stuck it in my backpack, make all things happen. It didn't work. I bought too many souvenirs. Sorry, not sorry. But they're pretty serious about that because it's a way for them to make some real good extra money. And there are some scientific reasons, like they have to do it for a certain level because of the balance of the aircraft. That's a different podcast from maybe an airline worker.

[02:55] Kristy: So knowing that those are the three primary pieces of luggage that we're looking at, if you are going on a flight that has a layover, is it connecting somewhere? My recommendation to you, if you can, is to bring a carry on only. Now I say it like that because I am an overpacker extraordinaire. Like I'm leaving for the airport today. In fact, like I'm going to be recording this episode, uploading it to my husband to edit and I'm literally running out the door to the airport to go to Orlando. But I, and today I'm only gone three nights, four days. So I actually managed to pack everything, a lot of things, but everything in my carry on and my backpack. So I'm doing it that way today. But if you're doing a layover, you certainly would be better off to bring it with you onto the aircraft so that it doesn't leave you and doesn't take off from you by any chance. Now I will say, and I'm going to knock on all the wood, I have not had an issue with lost luggage before. And the airlines now more than ever are doing a really good job. Like you can track your bags through the Southwest app. So like it, chances of your bags getting lost is not none. It's never going to be none. I mean, to be honest, I could leave my carry on in the airport gate pretty easily, but it's not—it's not likely to happen. I will say that if you're doing international travel, that's a little bit more risky, I think. And certainly if you're doing a code share flight, which means like let's say you book your flights, let's say with JetBlue, but a portion of your flights are operated by American, that gets even squishier. And if I'm doing a code share, I'm definitely, definitely doing carry on. But with checked bags, they're doing a really good job these days with it. So I wouldn't worry about them getting lost too much. I also have an Apple AirTag in all of my bags so that if for some reason it does get separated from me, I can tell somebody where it is.

[05:09] Kristy: The biggest consideration for me is what you need to bring with you. If you're doing a carry on, it has to go by the TSA rules, right? So you can't have big bottles of sunscreen. In fact, today as I'm packing, I have to use another—I got a small bottle to put my sunscreen in because the good sunscreen I bought is five ounces and it can't be any more than three. So it adds a little bit of struggle there. If you're somebody that uses a lot of beauty products, you can't—you can only carry on a quart-sized bag of your liquids onto the plane in your carry on. So that's kind of a big consideration there, too.

[05:46] Kristy: Another thing I like you to think about when you're traveling is where are you headed to? What is the weather likely to be? What is the ground situation likely to be when your bags arrive? And this is something that may not occur to people that don't travel to Orlando specifically, but also Florida is like the lightning capital of the world. And so anywhere in Florida in the summertime, this is something that you really should be considering.

[06:16] Kristy: Hey, I'm going to pause us right here for just a second because I want to ask you for a favor. If you've been hanging out with me on Talk Travel to Me and you're getting something out of it, would you take two minutes and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify? I know, I know. Nobody loves being asked to do the thing. But reviews are genuinely how other travelers find the show. And honestly, it just makes my day when I see them pop up. Even just a few words, even just stars. I'll take the stars. OK, favor asked. Back to it.

[06:48] Kristy: Take today, for example, I am flying from Manchester to Orlando. My flight leaves at about one o'clock, lands in Orlando about four o'clock. In the summer, Orlando almost every single day has a thunderstorm between three and five p.m. The humidity and the heat build all day. They burst into this crazy thunderstorm between three and five. And then usually it's gone. But I'm going to be landing at about four o'clock. So if I've checked a bag, that bag is going to be out in the rain while they're loading all of the bags onto the truck to bring them to the baggage claim area. Even worse is when there is lightning in—there is lightning in the area, they do a ground stop so that you can't have the crew out there with a metal truck loading luggage in thunder and lightning. You just can't have that. It's not safe. So the entire operation out there will stop and you won't be able to resume work until it's been a certain amount of time since the last lightning strike. This is the kind of thing that I want people to think about when you're traveling in the summer to Florida at that particular time of day. So for this trip, I'm absolutely using a carry on. And if it was a longer trip, I still would be using a carry on. I would be rolling things tighter and being a little bit more conservative with what I'm packing. But those are things to think about, too, because if I did it, not only would my stuff get wet, but also being in the airport with thousands of people waiting for their bags to come through. I've been there, done that. It's not fun. And that's going to be the case whether you're landing in Jacksonville, Orlando, Miami, all of these things, right? The weather is going to be a consideration.

[08:40] Kristy: My recommendation for just about everybody is going to be carry on if you can. Again, I understand that sometimes that's not going to happen. So let's say if you have the option between a hard-sided carry on bag or a duffel bag that you're going to bring as a carry on. I actually think that there's benefits to both. But when they measure duffel bags, because they're not the specific rectangle-ish bag that they're used to measuring, I don't think you get as much space for your buck. Like, I think they might turn you around and say that you're going to have to check that. So I would recommend just a simple roller bag suitcase that can go in the upper container. Duffel bag, if it's small enough, could fit under your seat. So I think that that could be a consideration as well.

[09:38] Kristy: Checked bags, one of the things that comes up for people a lot, I think probably half of my clients will ask me at some point whether I am a fan of soft-sided luggage or hard-sided luggage. And for a long time, I didn't have a strong opinion, except who had flown to California. It was a rare rainstorm actually in Orange County Airport, which is near Disneyland in Anaheim. And I had soft-sided luggage at that point. My soft-sided luggage got soaked. That thing sucked up so much water. I don't even know how heavy it was. I could barely move it and everything inside got wet. So that changed my philosophy. And I am a hard-sided girl all the way. Now, yes, that means that you can't shove more into it and make it expand a little bit more and all of that. But to me, knowing that my stuff is going to be relatively safe inside there, there still is a chance that there could be a little bit of moisture coming in through the zippers. But it's nothing like—in fact, I think I have pictures of that somewhere, but crazy amount of water that was just held onto inside that suitcase. So for me, soft-sided luggage is a no-go. I want hard-sided luggage for sure. I do not think that it is a good practice to check duffel bags. I've heard too many issues with them popping open, the zippers popping and breaking and things like that. There are some specific travel duffel bags that probably are OK. But like I said, the ones that I have seen and bear witness to, I don't think that's a good idea. But a duffel bag, if you have one that's small enough for under the seat, that's probably the way to go.

[11:25] Kristy: All right. I do think that compression bags to go inside your suitcases, fabulous. My husband is really good at rolling your clothes really, really tight so that can help you get a little bit more room inside there. I've also had really good luck with the vacuum bags, but only in carry-on luggage, because if your clothes are your clothes, they weigh the same whether the air has been sucked out of the bag or not. So it's going to take up just as much weight, I should say, in your checked bags. So that little tool might be helpful if you're doing carry ons. All right. I hope that's helpful. But I definitely—I know Emily happens to be going to Florida. And I would absolutely say that given the fact that we're talking summer in Florida, yeah, let's go with a carry on. Let's maybe need to buy your products like your sunscreen, hair stuff, whatever while you—when you get there to save yourself some of that hassle, or you can get a lot of those little tiny container things and fit them in a quart-sized bag and you're good. OK. All right.

[12:44] Kristy: Before I sneak off, I have to tell you about something I got to do this week. I sat down with Emily over on her show, Small Business Casual, for a really candid conversation about what it actually looks like to run a small business through all the twists and turns. And if you can think about the difference in what's happened in the travel industry over the last several years from economic downturns to COVID, we've got some twists and turns that have happened to us. Emily and I talked about how we first met. And honestly, it’s a good reminder of what showing up consistently can do for you. We also busted some of those big myths and misconceptions about being a travel agent, the stuff people assume that just isn't true. And I got real about navigating the pandemic, tough team moments, hard client situations and the overwhelm that comes with all of it. We also dug a little bit into investing. Why investing in yourself and your team matters if you actually want to grow, not just survive. It was so much fun to do this podcast with her. And I think you'll walk away with something useful, whether you're in travel or running any kind of small business. So go give her show Small Business Casual a listen and you'll find the link to the episode that I'm actually in, which dropped this week in the show notes.

[14:00] Kristy: All right, guys, that's one more question unpacked. Next week, we'll be answering the question, is a Walt Disney World VIP tour really worth the cost? Hint, that's where I'm jetting off to today, doing a VIP tour with my team. So at least a couple of them will be joining us on that next episode. And I am pretty sure you are not going to want to miss that. If today got you thinking, find everything at mickeyguru.com or right here in the show notes. We're also hanging out on Instagram and TikTok. See you next week, traveler.

[14:31] Outro: Thanks for listening to Talk Travel to Me. We hope this episode cracked open inspiration for the treasures that await you at your next dream destination. If you love the show, please review, subscribe and share it with a friend at Mickey Guru Travel Company, where your trusted guides for theme parks, cruises, resorts and more. Visit our website at mickeyguru.com to learn more and book your vacation today.