Seen tonight that Etihad are enforcing, strictly, 100% their economy cabin baggage rules : 7Kg and if it fitted the 'cage guage' for dimensions.

Absolutely no leeway at all was given.

Thanks for the heads-up !

Was this at initial check-in, or at the departure-gate ?

And did you see whether it was all airlines, as appeared to be the case last summer, or just Etihad ?

My brother has just come from Manchester with Etihad and they were strict on the hand luggage weight. Maybe because just recently they increased the checked baggage allowance?

Once a year, the last 2 years, I've experienced this with Etihad at Manchester. It's at check-in.

Good for Etihad, I wish every airline would enforce their rules concerning hand baggage sizing.

Emirates have done same with me a few times as well, never been a big deal as I transfer things into big bag. undersatdable its a saftey issue. Wish they would ban 1 lires of alochol, 400 passengers all with 1 litre would be a hell of a lot of flammable liquid in the cabin.

Yep - Etihad just increased their checked-in luggage allowance to a total of 30kg even in Coral economy (even the class of ticket you get with the cheapest websites). Motivation must have been to compete with Emirates which has offered that for some time.

It's still worth trying more than 7kg in your hand luggage if you need access to that amount of stuff or if its valuable, but be prepared to transfer the overweight into your checked-in luggage, so leave some leeway there and think about what you will transfer in advance. Having said that I'm pretty sure it is their standard procedure now to weigh at check-in. I flew on Dec 29th from Manchester to BKK. I was underweight for the cabin bag; they did weigh it at check-in and there were no other checks thereafter I put some books I had been carrying in my jacket at the check-in counter and a couple of duty frees bought air-side and there were no gate for me checks at Manchester or Abu Dhabi.

They will still accept a pretty chunky laptop bag (mine usually weighs about 5kg, only 1.5 of which is laptop!) in addition to the 7kg cabin bag. When I came to Bangkok on Emirates in October the check-in girl advised me that they would not accept a separate laptop bag along with the cabin bag and that I should be prepared to put the laptop bag in the cabin bag - despite the combined weight being over their 7 or 8kg; the implication seemed to be that they would turn a blind eye to the weight but they did not want to see 2 bags on board. I thought oh bu$$er - I'll never get my laptop bag to fit inside my cabin bag and decided to wing it - there was not much else I could do anyway without risking expensive or breakable stuff going into the hold. In the event no one stopped me getting on Emirates at Manchester with both cabin bag and laptop bag.

The general trend is tightening up. Best to play it safe from now on. I will resent the lower cabin bag limits a little bit if they do get strictly reinforced (despite agreeing in principle with the poster who thought it a good idea to stop the on-board bag mules)! You rarely get anything like your whole money back on insurance (particularly from the airline if you have no insurance, despite the fact that there is an IATA agreement that provides that there should be a fairly chunky 1,000 euros plus or something like that). I travel frequently and bag insurance isn't worth it on averaging it out, but if you do have to make a claim (against an airline in particular) watch out for the denials and weedling that goes on. Always pack small valuable items and anything that you would be severely pi$$ed off or inconvenienced if they lost it for you in your cabin bag/laptop.

I digress slightly!

Yes, confirm it was at the start of the check-in queue. Cabin baggage over-size / over-weight, had to sort out before joining the check-in queue properly.

As others have said, I'm also quite pleased that this is being enforced.

Was seeing off a friend on Emirates, and their counters are right next to Etihad. No such checks were on the Emirates flight last night.

Edited January 7, 201313 yr by seaeagle

I am all for strictly adhering to baggage allowance rules. if everybody bent the rules there would be no winners.

Its all well and good until you join a flight in Abu Dhabi where the transit passengers haven't been checked and they have 2-3 pieces at 10kg each. Watch the scrums at Cairo as the Etihad people try to enforce the rules, there is pandemonium and eventually the check-in and gate staff give in.

I find it hard to get to 7kg even with the Laptop...........Documents Folder Passport Ducats and a book.............

Never quite understand the Cabin Baggage fever when you have a Checked bag anyway....??