Luggage rules by airline
There is no such thing as an airline’s baggage allowance any more. There is a fare’s baggage allowance, and the airline sells six or eight different ones.
That is why a table of airline dimensions is the wrong tool. It goes stale within a season, and it answers a question nobody actually has. The useful skill is being able to open any carrier’s baggage page and know, in a minute and a half, exactly what you are entitled to carry.
The three tiers every European carrier now uses
Whatever the marketing calls them, cabin and hold baggage sort into the same three tiers across the continent.
The personal item. A small bag that must fit under the seat in front of you. Included on every fare, including the cheapest one on the screen.
The cabin bag. The wheeled trolley that goes in the overhead locker. This is either bundled into a pricier fare or sold as an add-on, and it is where almost all the money in the system sits.
The hold bag. Always paid for, priced in weight bands, and — this is the part people miss — priced differently depending on the moment you buy it.
Open the baggage page, work out which tier your fare includes, then read the dimensions for each tier. That is the whole exercise.
The fare name decides, not the airline
“Basic”, “Light”, “Value”, “Essential”, “Smart”, “Flex” — these words are doing the work that used to be done by the airline’s name. Two people on the same aircraft, sitting next to each other, routinely have different allowances.
So when someone tells you what a given airline allows, they are telling you what their fare allowed. It is not transferable information, including from your own last trip on the same carrier.
Check your booking confirmation rather than the airline’s general page. The confirmation names the fare, and the fare is the answer.
Depth is the dimension that fails
Everyone memorises the long side. The sizer catches you on depth.
A soft holdall measured empty and flat passes comfortably. Packed with a rolled coat and a wash bag it gains three or four centimetres through the middle and no longer drops into the frame. The sizer is a rigid box measuring the bag you are holding, not the bag in the product photograph.
If you are two centimetres inside on depth, you are not two centimetres inside. Buy a bag whose structured dimensions match the allowance, and leave the expandable zip alone.
What the EU guarantees now, and what it will guarantee later
This is where most writing on the subject is currently wrong, so it is worth being exact.
As of mid-2026, the guaranteed free item across the members of Airlines for Europe is a personal item of 40 × 30 × 15 cm that fits under the seat. The trade body’s airlines implemented that standard from summer 2025, following a June 2025 agreement among member states. Some carriers are more generous: Ryanair moved its free under-seat bag to 40 × 30 × 20 cm in September 2025.
The reform people have read about is real, and it is not in force. On 7 July 2026 the European Parliament approved a revision of the air passenger rights regulation that guarantees a free cabin bag alongside the personal item in the ticket price. It keeps the existing three-hour delay threshold and the €250 / €400 / €600 compensation bands. It is expected to apply from 2027.
So in the summer of 2026, an airline charging you for an overhead cabin bag is not breaking the law. Anyone who tells you the EU has banned cabin bag fees is describing next year.
Weight limits or dimension limits
Carriers publish both, but they only really enforce one, and which one tells you what to worry about.
Full-service and legacy carriers tend to police weight. The limit is printed, the check-in agent has scales, and on a full flight or a small regional aircraft it stops being theoretical.
Low-cost carriers tend to police dimensions, with a metal sizer at the gate and a staff member beside it. Their cabin weight limits are often generous or absent precisely because the sizer does the work.
It is a tendency rather than a rule, but it is a useful one. On a legacy carrier the risk is a heavy bag. On a low-cost carrier the risk is a fat one.
Liquids are now an airport question, not an airline one
The default across the EU as of mid-2026 remains 100 ml per container, in a single transparent one-litre bag.
Newer CT scanners produce a three-dimensional image and have let some airports raise or drop the limit entirely — at several, containers up to two litres are now acceptable. Others have made no change. At some large hubs only certain security lanes have the new machines, so the rule can differ between terminals of the same airport.
Assume 100 ml unless the departure airport’s own website says otherwise, and check again for the return, because the two ends of a trip are frequently on different rules. Medically necessary liquids and baby food for the journey are exempt from the cap throughout the EU — carry them separately and declare them.
The fee ladder, and where the bottom rung is
Bag pricing is a ladder that only goes up. Cheapest at the moment of booking, more expensive added later online, more again at the airport bag drop, most of all at the gate.
The gate charge is not an accident of pricing. It is set high on purpose, because the gate is the one place where you cannot decide to walk away. Reported gate fees for an oversized or unpaid cabin bag on the cheapest European carriers ran around €70–75 in mid-2026 — check the current fee table for your carrier, since these move.
Which gives one clean rule. If you know you need the bag, the cheapest moment was at booking, and the second-cheapest moment is now.
Five people do not need five bags
Hold allowances are sold per bag, not per person, on most low-cost carriers. The weight limit belongs to the bag, and nobody at the belt cares whose socks are in it.
A group of five going away for a week very rarely needs five 20 kg cases. One or two shared hold bags plus everyone’s cabin allowance usually does it, at a fraction of the cost.
Check one thing first: some carriers require the bag to be checked in under the passenger it was purchased against, which means that person has to be at the desk. Book accordingly rather than discovering it in the queue.
Instruments, pushchairs and mobility equipment
Mobility equipment is the one with real law behind it. Under Regulation (EC) 1107/2006, a disabled passenger or a passenger with reduced mobility is entitled to the carriage of up to two pieces of mobility equipment free of charge, including an electric wheelchair, on flights departing from, arriving at or transiting an EU airport. Give the airline 48 hours’ notice. It does not come out of your baggage allowance, and if the equipment is damaged or lost in handling the carrier owes you compensation.
Pushchairs and child seats are carried free by near-universal convention rather than by statute — typically one of each per child, gate-checked at the aircraft door. Confirm it at booking rather than assuming.
Instruments are pure airline policy. Small ones usually count as your cabin bag; anything cello-sized needs a seat bought for it. Ask before you turn up, and get the answer in writing.
When the lockers fill and your bag is taken at the door
On a full flight the overhead lockers run out, and the last people to board have their cabin bags tagged and put in the hold. There is no fee for this.
There is a cost, and it lands at the other end. Your bag comes off the belt with the hold luggage, which is the one thing a hand-luggage-only trip existed to avoid. On a tight connection it is how people miss the next flight.
Before you board, take out your passport, medication, chargers, keys, valuables and anything you cannot replace. Do it as a habit, not when you see the gate agent reaching for the tags.
The exception: connecting on separate tickets
Two tickets bought separately are two journeys that happen to be near each other.
Your baggage does not through-check. You collect it, re-clear security, and drop it again. The second carrier’s rules then apply from scratch — its dimensions, its weight bands, its prices, bought at the airport at airport prices.
Allowances do not add up or carry over either. A generous 23 kg on the first leg buys you nothing on the second, and a bag that passed one sizer will meet a different one.
This is where the largest unexpected charges of the whole trip get made. If your itinerary is stitched together from separate bookings, price the second carrier’s bag before you commit to the first.