As a budget traveler, I’m no stranger to sacrificing little luxuries in order to secure cheaper airline tickets. To save a few bucks, I’ve given up leg room, sacrificed picking my seats ahead of time, and flown at less-desirable hours. But the hardest thing to swallow as a frugal flier was not being able to bring a carry-on suitcase with me.
Airlines like Spirit and Frontier (in the United States) and Ryanair (in Europe) are known for their fees for extra bags. But other airlines, including United and JetBlue, have also started to introduce carry-on fees for basic economy tickets on certain flights—in other words, anything that’s not a personal item. (A personal item is the bag that airlines let you shove under the seat in front of you. All airline tickets include this free bag with your ticket, no matter which class you fly, at least for now.)
It’s already hard enough to pack for a whole weekend in a standard carry-on, so squeezing everything into a personal-item bag is even trickier—especially since not all personal items (and standards set by airlines) are created equal. But, in general, the average size of a personal-item bag (or a piece of underseat luggage) is roughly 18 by 14 by 8 inches. And if you want to make the most of those limited dimensions, Kit Dillon, senior staff writer and Wirecutter travel expert, recommends using a bag that is as rectangular as possible, so it’s easier to slide under the seat. After your bag is packed, however, you still have to make sure that it fits the dimensions outlined by the airline you’re traveling with.
At Wirecutter, we’ve been putting all kinds of luggage, backpacks, and packing solutions to the test in real-world travel environments for at least a decade now. And we’ve spent lots of time thinking about how much can be packed into each bag we test. We’ve thoroughly tested packing cubes, and we’ve investigated ways to maximize space while packing. I set out to find personal-item bags to pack for a weekend, based on Wirecutter’s bag and packing recommendations. I also attempted to fit the same amount of clothes and toiletries into two personal-item bags, using a variety of packing methods and hacks. It turns out that with the right packing method, you can take a lot with you, but this requires a packing list—as well as a willingness to keep that list short.
