I Checked Carry-On Rules at 75 Airlines: The Real Trap

Editor’s note (May 2026): Published before Spirit Airlines shut down on May 2, 2026 (Chapter 7 liquidation). Spirit’s numbers in the dataset below are a historical snapshot from when it still flew; the airline no longer operates.

I watched someone put their backpack in a sizer at a gate a couple of months ago. It was less than an inch over the personal item rule. The agent apologized, said no, and made her check the bag. She walked away frustrated. I walked away thinking about the data.

That moment kicked off a small project. I pulled the published carry-on and personal item rules for 75 airlines and tested both. The carry-on data came out about how I expected: 17 of 75 airlines reject a standard 22 by 14 by 9 inch suitcase outright on at least one published dimension. The personal item data did not. 16 of 75 airlines do not publish personal item dimensions at all, including Delta, the largest US carrier. Among the 59 that do, the smallest published allowance is less than one fifth the volume of the largest.

How I tested

The data lives in a JSON file on my server. 75 airlines, each with a carryOn object and a personalItem object. Both have a published dimensionsIn field for length, width, and height when the airline publishes them, plus a flag for whether basic economy includes the carry-on. The data is verified against airline policy pages on a rolling 30-day cadence. I first ran this analysis in May 2026; every number below now comes from the airline records. 72 of the 75 were last verified on October 1, 2026, with individual fields re-read as late as October 25. The other three are older: Spirit (April 22, before it shut down), Transavia (July 1), and Copa (September 14). Each row’s date is in the CSV. The full per-airline dataset including everything below is at /data/75-airline-personal-item-trap-2026.csv.

The test bag is 22 by 14 by 9 inches. That is the size most US travelers picture when they hear “carry-on,” and the size most US-made hardshell suitcases ship as. I categorized each airline three ways. Pass means all three published dimensions are at or above 22, 14, and 9. Borderline means a single dimension is within half an inch of the test bag, and the others pass. Fail means at least one dimension is more than half an inch short of the test bag.

I used a dimension-by-dimension test, not the linear-inches sum. Linear inches (length plus width plus height, capped at 45 in most rules) hides the cases where a deep bag fits a tall slot. The dimension test is the version that tracks how a gate sizer actually checks: the bag has to drop into the slot on all three sides. I line up the longest side with the longest side, then the middle with the middle, then the shortest with the shortest, so a bag turned on its side counts.

The carry-on results

36 airlines pass the test. 20 are borderline. 17 fail outright. Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines are not on the chart. Singapore publishes only a 115 cm (45 in) cap on length plus width plus height, and Cathay keeps its cabin bag size inside a baggage calculator, so neither gives me a length to plot.

The pass list groups along familiar lines. Three US carriers top the chart with 24-inch length allowances: Sun Country, Southwest, and Frontier. The big middle band sits at exactly 22 inches: US legacy carriers, a mix of European flag carriers, and the major Asian and Middle Eastern carriers that map their published rule directly to the US convention. Japan Airlines and TAP Air Portugal sit in that band too, at 22 by 16 by 10 inches. WestJet publishes 22 by 9 by 14, the same box as the test bag with width and depth listed in the other order, so a standard suitcase fits once it is turned on its side.

The borderline cluster is more interesting. Most of it sits at 21.7 inches. That number is not arbitrary. 21.7 inches is 55 cm, rounded. Most non-US carriers set their published rule in centimeters, then convert to inches, and 55 cm is the number they use. The standard US carry-on is 22 inches. The standard international carry-on is 55 cm. Those are not the same number. They are 0.3 inches apart. By the published rule, a US-bought 22-inch suitcase is technically out of spec at Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian, ANA, ITA, Turkish, Wizz Air, Transavia, SunExpress, and the Nordic carriers (SAS, Finnair, Norwegian). Air Canada, Porter, and Aer Lingus are borderline at 21.5 inches. The gap is small enough that gate sizers usually do not catch it. The gap is also why every traveler who has flown both has felt some version of this confusion.

The outright fails sort along their own logic. Ryanair and Vueling publish 55 by 40 by 20 cm, which is 21.7 by 15.7 by 7.9 inches. The 7.9-inch depth is what kills a 9-inch standard suitcase. Korean Air and Air Arabia publish the same 55 by 40 by 20 cm; the depth is what kills them on the test, not the length. Emirates publishes 21.7 by 15 by 8.7, just shy on length and just shy on depth. flydubai publishes 21.7 by 15 by 7.9, failing on the same two axes. Air France and KLM both publish 55 by 35 by 25 cm, which works out to 21.7 by 13.8 by 9.9 inches at Air France and 9.8 at KLM. The 35 cm width is what gets them: a 14-inch standard bag is just over their 13.8. The same width problem catches IndiGo, LATAM, and Brazil’s two big carriers, Azul and GOL Linhas Aéreas, which all publish the same 55 by 35 by 25 cm. Air New Zealand publishes 21 by 16 by 9 inches, a full inch short on length, and Air India’s 21 by 15 by 7 misses on length and depth. Qatar Airways (20 by 15 by 10) and Scoot (21.3 by 15 by 9.1) come up short on length too. Spring Airlines is the strictest in the dataset at 30 by 20 by 40 cm (11.8 by 7.9 by 15.7 inches), with a 7 kg (15.4 lb) weight cap that would fail a loaded carry-on regardless.

A side fact worth filing away: 32 of 75 airlines block carry-on entirely in basic economy. The list runs through the European budget set (Ryanair, easyJet, Pegasus, SunExpress, Vueling, Condor, Norwegian, Eurowings, Wizz Air, Transavia) and crosses over to the European mainline group whose cheapest fare also strips the cabin allowance (Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian, SAS, Finnair). Add WestJet, Air Canada, Porter, United, Aeromexico, Volaris, Viva Aerobus, the South American trio of GOL, LATAM, and Avianca, and five US low-cost carriers (Sun Country, Frontier, Spirit, Allegiant, Breeze), and the count is just over two in five airlines tested. On those airlines the suitcase that fits the rule cannot board unless you upgrade the fare. The published rule is gateable. The gate just is not open.

I expected the post to end there

While running the analysis I noticed every airline record had two carry-on fields, not one. The personal item. I expected this to be a copy-paste of the carry-on data, just with smaller numbers. It was not.

Of the 75 airlines, 59 publish personal item dimensions. 16 do not. That includes Delta, the largest US carrier by revenue. Delta’s published rule says only “must fit under the seat in front of you” and lists examples: purses, small backpacks, laptop bags. There is no length, no width, no depth. Alaska, Hawaiian, and Southwest leave their personal item dimensions unpublished too. The rest of the unpublished group skews international: Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, Emirates, Etihad, Qatar, Saudia, Qantas, Aeromexico, Air New Zealand, and IndiGo, plus the budget carriers Jetstar and Spring. The personal item rule for many of the largest airlines in the world is, in writing, “vibes.” American (18 by 14 by 8) and United (17 by 10 by 9) are the US legacies that do publish, and they are the exception, not the norm.

Among the 59 carriers that do publish personal item dimensions, the range is dramatic. The smallest published allowance is a two-way tie at 364 cubic inches. Bamboo Airways and VietJet, both Vietnamese, each publish 11.8 by 7.9 by 3.9 inches (30 by 20 by 10 cm). AirAsia, Scoot, and Singapore Airlines come next at 15.7 by 11.8 by 3.9 inches, a thin folio shape of 723 cubic inches. At the other end, six airlines tie for the largest published rule at 18 by 14 by 8 inches (2,016 cubic inches): American, Spirit, Allegiant, Viva Aerobus, and Avianca, plus Frontier, which lists the same numbers as 14 by 18 by 8. The volume difference between the largest and the smallest is more than five to one.

The European mainline carriers cluster tightly at 40 by 30 by something cm, with most heights pinned at 15 cm (5.9 inches). Fourteen airlines publish exactly 15.7 by 11.8 by 5.9 inches, and 13 of them are European: Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian, Discover, Condor, KLM, SAS, Finnair, Turkish, Pegasus, Iberia, ITA, and Virgin Atlantic. Korean Air is the fourteenth. Air France and British Airways sit right beside them at 16 by 12 by 6. The 5.9-inch depth is the trap. A typical small backpack is 5 to 8 inches deep when packed; the published European personal item slot just barely accepts the slimmer end of that range, and only when unpacked enough to compress. The five carriers at the slimmest depth (3.9 inches) are AirAsia, Scoot, Singapore Airlines, Bamboo Airways, and VietJet. All five are based in Southeast Asia, so the slim folio is a regional pattern as much as a budget one.

The published personal item dimensions are widest at the US ULCCs and a few other carriers: American, Spirit, Allegiant, Viva Aerobus, and Avianca all publish 18 by 14 by 8 inches. Frontier publishes the same numbers in a different order (14 by 18 by 8). JetBlue and Breeze are similar at 17 by 13 by 8. United at 17 by 10 by 9 is on the smaller end of the US-published group; Delta, Alaska, Hawaiian, and Southwest do not publish at all. The contrast between the European 15.7 by 11.8 by 5.9 rule and the American 18 by 14 by 8 rule is nearly two to one in volume.

If you want to check your specific bag against a specific airline, the data above powers a free carry-on size checker. It reads the same airline file. I re-derived this post and its CSV from that file in October 2026, and they get updated with it whenever a record changes, so the numbers here and in the checker should agree.

What this data does not capture

None of the above accounts for gate enforcement. The published rule is the floor, not the ceiling. A bag that meets every published number can still get rejected at the gate. A bag that fails by half an inch can fly fine for years.

Ryanair will measure your bag and weigh it before you board. They have to: the fees on non-compliant bags are how the airline makes money. Lufthansa rarely measures and almost never weighs. American gate agents will eyeball most bags and only test in the sizer if the bag clearly looks oversized or the flight is full. The same airline can be strict at one station and loose at another. Summer routes to Europe are stricter than winter routes to anywhere. The flight that ramps up after a missed connection is stricter than the early morning bank. Whether your bag flies often depends on which side of someone’s bad day you arrive on.

The dataset is the scoreboard. The actual game is played at the jet bridge by a person whose mood you cannot predict. The gate moment I started this post with, where the bag was less than an inch off and the agent said no, is the part the data cannot reach.

Why I built the dataset

I built this because I needed structured airline data for the comparison pages on my travel site. There are 71 airline-vs-airline pages that all needed bag fees, carry-on dimensions, basic-economy rules, and a few other fields. Pulling those numbers from prose every time was a non-starter. Once it was structured, exposing it as a public tool was the obvious next step. The widget powering the bag size checker is the same JSON file behind this post and behind the comparison pages. There is one source of truth, and it gets refreshed on a 30-day cadence against the airlines’ own published policy pages.

That is also why this post can be specific. Every number above traces to a record in the file, and every record has a lastVerified date and a sourceUrl. The CSV linked at the top has all of that.

What I am still figuring out

The unanswered question is whether the airlines that do not publish personal item dimensions are stricter or looser at the gate than the ones that do. The Delta-style “fits under the seat” rule is permissive on paper and may translate to permissive in practice. Or it may not. I do not have that data. The next analysis I want to run is a sample of routes per airline at the gate, with a real bag, watching what gets through and what does not. That is a longer project and probably needs help from people who fly more than I do.

If you have a story about a personal item that got rejected (or one that should have been rejected and breezed through), I want to hear it. The stories are the part of this dataset that is missing.