It seems like whenever you’re flying and wind up having a dispute with an airline employee, there’s a fine line between making your point and getting your butt kicked off the flight.

Of course, you usually hear about the passengers who are wrong but still make a big stink about it. Or who may even be right but went about making their point so inappropriately that they’re removed from the flight (or get to talk with the airport police when they land). But, of course, that’s the sort of thing that gets clicks – no one cares if everything and everyone on the flight was wonderful. 😉

And then, every once in a while, someone has an issue with an airline employee and is 100% right…but still loses. A social media creator who goes by the username @funkshe recently wound up in one of those situations.

@funkshe, whose first name is Nancy, has a presence on YouTube and Instagram, but her story was shared on her TikTok account. The self-described frequent flyer had arrived at the check-in desk for her Delta Airlines flight so she could check her bag. However, she was told that her bag exceeded the parameters of Delta’s size policy for checked bags.

Delta’s policy on its website says that the size of a checked bag, “must not exceed 62 inches (158 cm) when you total LENGTH + WIDTH + HEIGHT.” They also say that an oversized bag is considered to be 63″ – 80″ (bags larger than 80″ aren’t allowed), and the fee for it is $200 USD.

“Hey Delta Airlines, you have lost two loyal customers because of this new policy that you decided to enforce today, where you will get charged $200 if your checked bag exceeds 62 inches in height, width, length, and they will incorrectly measure it,” Nancy said in the video.

She continued, “This woman at the counter says, ‘I’ve never used this ruler before, this is my first time using this measuring tape, ha ha,’ ’cause your bag is 20 by 13 by 30 which is 68 inches, which means you are charged $200 because your bag exceeds 62 inches. First of all, that’s 63. You did your math completely wrong.”

She then proceeded to point out that the actual measurements of her luggage are within the requirements of the airline’s rule.

“My bag is 19.5 by 30, by 12.5, which is exactly 62 inches,” said Nancy. “Why are we rounding up? You don’t know how to correctly measure using measuring tape, and you don’t know how to do math.”

The creator said the employee told her she’d “make an exception” for her, but that her SkyMiles account would show she had an oversized bag.

“What exception? We didn’t do anything wrong. Our bag was not over the size limit, she says. “I don’t understand.”

Nancy said the Delta employee then told her that they weakly enforced the policy before, but they were now strongly enforcing it.

“This is more expensive than my actual flight,” she concluded.

Here’s the video:

The response

Most of the responses, not surprisingly, lambasted Delta for enforcing the rules and suggesting it’s because they now have to reimburse passengers for delayed/cancelled flights now. Regardless of the “why,” I’m not going to fault a company for reinforcing their own rules…not even if they didn’t used to.

However, the issue seemed to be more about the employee who apparently couldn’t measure a bag properly, and/or couldn’t add correctly, and/or then rounded the proper numbers up (perhaps on purpose?), which made the total square inches of the bag larger than they actually were.

I mean really, companies that make bags know what the standard max dimensions of luggage need to be. And the reputable places are going to stay within those limits or they’re either not going to be able to sell those bags, or are going to have to deal with a bunch of returns because the bags are larger than advertised and therefore too big for the airlines.

How to avoid this

Is Delta enticing its agents to be sticklers for the size rules, a’la Frontier, and giving them a bonus for each oversized bag they find? And that, in turn, entices some agents to do unscrupulous things like round up their measurements. Who knows? But if they are, it’s up to each passenger to ensure they’re not caught in the same “gotcha” that @funkshe found herself in.

Obviously, the best way to avoid this is to not use a bag that’s so close to the upper limits of bag size. There’s no way a bag that’s significantly less than a total of 62″ H + W + D is going to be misconstrued as one that’s over the limit (and if yours is close, make yourself absolutely, positively sure it IS indeed 62″ or less before you buy it).

Since @funkshe talked about the employee not knowing how to use the tape measure, make sure they’re indeed measuring it correctly.

You can also ask for a supervisor or for someone else to measure the bag in question. A “second opinion,” if you will.

Several respondents to the TikTok video recommended keeping a copy of the bag’s dimensions, as some sort of “proof” of the bag’s size. I can appreciate the sentiment, but I doubt it would hold water. Bags can look the same and just because you have a website that says XYZ bag is, I dunno, 20″ x 30″ x 12″ doesn’t mean you could have a knockoff that’s actually 20″ x 30″ x 12.25″.

And, of course, it goes without saying that if you wind up having a disagreement with the airline employee, you should remain pleasant. Otherwise, we go right back to someone being right but behaving inappropriately enough to be removed from the flight. And nobody wants that to happen.

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