I have been flying with you almost every week since 2018 apart from Covid when I was one of the few weekly LNER passengers. I know your aircraft the way I know my own house. I know which seats have more legroom, which routes and time slots are reliably late, which lounges have a decent cup of tea and which have the kind of WiFi that makes you nostalgic for dial-up. I know the boarding announcements by heart. I know the dance.
I travel with a rucksack. Not because I haven’t noticed that everyone else has a hard-shell cabin case, but because I travel with a laptop and work equipment and a change of clothes, and a rucksack is what works for me. It complies with your cabin baggage policy. It is, in almost every case, smaller and more flexible than the maximum permitted dimensions. It causes no problems for the overhead locker.
Except that it does. Because a rucksack, unlike a hard-shell case, can be made to fit under the seat in front. And so, on a number of occasions over the years, a member of your cabin crew has appeared beside me, held up my bag, and asked whether it was mine. The question is always polite. The intention behind it is always clear.
I have never argued. I have never made a scene. I have what I am told is an impressive poker face, and I have deployed it every time. I take the bag. I put it under the seat. I lose the legroom I was hoping to keep. I say nothing.
What I feel is something I have become very practised at not showing. Insulted, in a way that is difficult to explain proportionately. Frustrated, because I followed every rule and am being asked to give something up that I followed the rules specifically in order to keep. And something underneath those two things that I can only describe as shame, as though I have done something wrong, as though the rucksack is evidence of a character flaw rather than a practical choice.
I have developed, over years of this, a set of rituals. I board as early as I can. I stow the bag quickly and sit down before anyone notices. I avoid eye contact with the crew during the boarding process. I do not look up when they walk past. I wait for the overhead lockers to close with the particular relief of someone who has got away with something, which is not a feeling I should be having about luggage I paid to bring.
Once, I had upgraded to Business Class. I was Group 1. I boarded first. I stowed my rucksack and my coat and sat down and looked at my phone. A stewardess appeared, held up my rucksack, and asked whether it was mine. I confirmed that it was. She handed it back to me and asked me to put it under the seat.
I did. I said nothing. I have an incredible poker face.
I am writing this not because I expect anything to change, and not because I believe your crew are doing anything other than their best in difficult circumstances. I am writing it because I think there are a great many passengers who know exactly this feeling, who have developed exactly these rituals, who board early and stow quickly and avoid eye contact and wait for the lockers to close, and who have never quite found the words for why it feels the way it does.
It feels like being told, repeatedly and politely, that you are in the way. That your practical choice is an inconvenience. That the rules apply to you in a different way than they apply to the person beside you with the hard-shell case that cannot go under any seat.
I am not asking for special treatment. I am asking to feel, occasionally, like a passenger rather than a problem.
Yours,
Alasdair Macleod
Frequent flyer, Group 1 or 2 depending on the day, rucksack owner
One flight. Seven announcements.
One of many automated announcements at Heathrow Terminal 5
… here today. To reduce congestion in the cabin and to ensure that we can depart on time, we are looking for volunteers to check-in their hand baggage free of charge. Anyone who is able to do this will be eligible for priority boarding with Group 3. Your bags will be available to collect at the baggage carousel once you arrive at your destination. Please ensure all lithium-ion battery powered items have been removed before handing over your bags to be tagged and checked-in. Please come forward and see a member of the gate team. Thank you in advance.
These announcements were on board a single flight as we boarded the aircraft
Announcement 1
… bag or coats are under the seat in front of you unless you are sitting in a front row seat or an emergency exit row. Thank you.
Announcement 2
… flight to Aberdeen. To help us depart as soon as possible please place your larger hand baggage securely in the overhead lockers – smaller bags including those tagged with a yellow label must be placed under the seat in front of you. If you …
Announcement 3
… rucksacks, duty free or coats must go under the seat in front of you to avoid any delays. Thank you.
Announcement 4
… and crew, welcome on board this British Airways flight to Aberdeen. To help us depart as soon as possible please place all larger hand baggage securely in the overhead lockers. All smaller bags including those tagged with a yellow label must go under the seat in front of you.
Announcement 5
… down to Aberdeen today so we do ask for your cooperation with your hand baggage. Any smaller bags, rucksacks, duty free bags or coats must go under the seat in front of you. Thank you for your cooperation.
Announcement 6
… we do ask that any suitcases go into the overhead lockers – all smaller bags, rucksacks, duty free bags, coats, jackets or small items go under the seat in front of you. Thank you.
Announcement 7
… Aberdeen today so we do ask for your cooperation with baggage. Please only place larger items in the overhead lockers – any rucksacks, hand bags, duty free items or jackets must go under the seat in front of you. Thank you.
Postscript, August 2026
I flew with you again on Sunday. A member of your cabin crew held up my rucksack and asked whether it was mine. I confirmed that it was. I put it under the seat. I might also point out that it does not fit. I have to place my feet either side, one in the aisle and one next to the shoe of the lady beside me.
I did not expect anything to have changed. But it has left me thinking about a different part of this, which is what I am actually paying you for.
I am old enough to remember when you served a meal on this route. Not a remarkable meal. A tray with something hot on it, on a flight between Aberdeen and London, included in the fare. That ended on 11 January 2017, when complimentary catering on short haul was replaced with Marks and Spencer food I could buy. Your chief executive at the time explained that this was in response to customers asking for more choice and better quality.
I now receive a bottle of water and a packet of crisps. Before mid-morning I receive a cereal bar instead. That arrangement started during the pandemic, and you decided to keep it.
A meal, then a shop, then a cereal bar. Each stage announced as an improvement.
None of this would trouble me if the fare had travelled in the same direction. It has not.
I understand why. You are the only airline flying between Aberdeen and Heathrow. easyJet flies to Gatwick and Luton, which is a different proposition. I am not buying a sandwich from you. I am buying a slot, a schedule, and a tier status I cannot take anywhere else. You have priced accordingly, and I have paid it, and I can hardly complain about a bargain I keep agreeing to.
Except that, more often than not, I do not get the slot either. My Sunday flight tends to arrive at a stand chosen for wherever the aircraft is going next, which is somewhere international and not Aberdeen. What that means for me is a bus, and another twenty five minutes, at the end of a journey I chose specifically because it was supposed to be the quick one. I have no evidence that this is deliberate. I notice only that the convenience is always allocated in the same direction, and that the direction is not mine.
I look at my tier points sometimes and I am not sure what they are for. Eight years of choosing you, most weeks, and what the number entitles me to is boarding earlier, so that I can put my bag under the seat before anyone else does.
There is another part of this I did not know until I looked it up.
Your published cabin baggage policy is more generous than easyJet’s. You allow me a small handbag and a full cabin bag at fifty six by forty five by twenty five centimetres, in the locker, at no charge. easyJet allows me one bag under the seat, and charges me if I want the locker.
So easyJet sells me an under-seat bag and puts my bag under the seat. You sell me a locker and then, on boarding the aircraft, ask for it back. Three of the seven announcements on my last flight named rucksacks specifically. Your policy does not.
I had assumed, before I checked, that you had quietly become easyJet. You have not. easyJet keeps a smaller promise. You charge a great deal more for a larger one and then decline to honour it, politely, one passenger at a time.
I also assumed this was cost-cutting, and it is not that either. British Airways made an operating profit of £2,230 million in 2025, a record year, at a margin of 15.2%. You describe this as the result of a transformation programme backed by £7 billion of investment.
Seven billion pounds. And a stewardess in an aisle asking a Group 1 passenger to put his bag by his feet.
I am not an economist. I do not know what to call a business where the price rises, the product shrinks, and the returns improve every year. I suspect it is called a slot at Heathrow.
Your crew will ask me the same question on Thursday. I will put the bag under the seat. I have an incredible poker face.
Yours, still,
Alasdair Macleod
Frequent flyer, Group 1 or 2 depending on the day, rucksack owner