It's like the eternal struggle between good & evil – passengers & airlines
The search for better luggage scales
I have an old butchers carcass scale at home. A big, rusty, mechanical beast of a scale set with a menacing hook dangling from the bottom.
While there’s some nice sentiments associated with the thing, I realise it’s not quite the optimum way to weigh luggage before a trip. And I’m sure not taking it along with me for on the go adjustments.
As airlines have sought new revenue streams, luggage is being attacked in earnest. As such, we need travel companies to start offering better solutions for fliers to weigh and adjust (on the fly).
The above pictured solution from Digigrip (via NOTCOT) looks like a step in the right direction, but lacks much sophistication.
Ricardo released a more elegant solution a few years ago, but that seems to have been discontinued.
Inbuilt scale adds expense, but improves elegance
And then there’s our favourite concept so far, a fun elastic scale we saw a little while back. for which we clipped the image, and then lost the source (oops…).
Update: It’s by Marcella Maltese and Lin Wei, it’s called the Gravity Ruler, and they’re looking for a maker. See more here.
The Gravity Ruler
Then there are loads of hideous digital clunkers – but they feel worse than paying the excess.
With nothing really fully dialed, I think it’s back to the butchers scale for now…
We have 3 kids, whose weights we generally know. Lifting each kid and then the bag, we can usually get pretty close to accurate guesses (with a bit of interpolation). But I guess 3 kids are even harder to carry around than the butchers scales.
Hey Jake,
you rock. That’s an epic solution.
As they grow, you might have to start avoiding Japan and sticking with the USA to match their baggage allowances, but that’s a small price to pay for such a rad solution.
How annoying and so little efficient to pack our bags to their ability and realized at the airport that we are few kg over. Well the bill that usually follow is a lot heavier, and useless.
The anxious traveller would be so disappointed to have packed just the tricked minimum, and missed on all that shopping they could have done.
Travellling these days are easier and easier, buy when it comes to luggage it’s caveman style process!
That would be super handy. The dance of weighing yourself on the bathroom scale and then holding the bag and weighing yourself and the bag is always tricky, particularly while holding a heavy bag the bathroom scale is almost impossible to read.
(Is it way too evil to mention in this comment that I think passengers and their bags should be weighed together… Yup probably, but it makes sense)