Airline baggage glossary

What is a baggage allowance?

A baggage allowance is what your ticket lets you carry free. It has 2 parts: a cabin allowance for the bag you keep with you, and a checked allowance for the hold. Your fare, route and travel class set both.

The checked half is written as total kilograms, such as 25 kg, or as a number of pieces, such as 2 × 23 kg. The cabin half is commonly one 7 kg bag on the India to Gulf corridor, sometimes with a personal item under the seat.

Your fare moves the number most. The cheapest fares can drop the checked half entirely: flydubai Lite, and Air India Express Xpress Lite on domestic routes, include only the cabin bag.

Same passenger, 3 tickets, 3 allowances. On that Delhi to New York route, Air India's Classic and Flex fares give 2 pieces of 23 kg instead of 1.

Your e-ticket, booking confirmation and the airline's Manage Booking page show the allowance that applies to you. Anything above it is excess baggage.

Sample fares from our verified data file, checked July 2026. Higher fare tiers carry more.

What's the difference between cabin, checked and carry-on?

Cabin baggage, hand luggage and carry-on are 3 regional names for the same bag, the one you keep with you and stow in the overhead bin. Checked baggage, called hold baggage in the UK, travels in the aircraft hold.

India and the Gulf say cabin baggage. The UK says hand luggage or hand baggage, and the US says carry-on.

The cabin bag is limited by size and a low weight cap, commonly 7 kg on the India to Gulf corridor. IndiGo, SpiceJet, Air India Express and Akasa Air commonly use a 55 × 35 × 25 cm box, while Air India uses 55 × 40 × 20 cm.

The classic US carry-on is 22 × 14 × 9 inches, or 56 × 36 × 23 cm.

The 7 kg cabin limit is gross, so the empty bag counts. An empty cabin trolley weighs 2.5 to 3.5 kg, which means a hard shell can use half the allowance before you pack a shirt.

The checked bag carries the real load. Its allowance is a weight, such as 25 kg on an Emirates Saver fare, or a piece count, such as 2 × 23 kg on a US route, and most airlines cap each checked bag at 158 cm total.

You can't reach the hold during the flight. Anything you need on board, plus power banks and spare batteries, goes in the cabin bag.

What is a personal item?

A personal item is a small bag that fits under the seat in front of you, like a handbag, laptop bag or small backpack. Whether you get one on top of your cabin bag depends on the airline.

The airlines we track split into 3 camps for economy, plus 1 carrier whose own guidance is contested.

A laptop and charger weigh close to 2 kg. Moving them into a free personal item gives you back nearly 2 kg of the 7 kg cabin limit on IndiGo or Akasa Air.

On SpiceJet the same move saves nothing, because the laptop bag counts inside the 7 kg. On Qatar Airways, a laptop bag carried on its own can be treated as your one cabin bag.

Economy rules from our verified data file, checked July 2026. Business and first cabins usually get a larger or second cabin piece.

What is the weight concept?

The weight concept counts checked baggage as one total in kilograms, such as 30 kg, which you can split across bags as long as no bag tops 32 kg. India, the Gulf and most of Asia and Europe use it.

Route-by-route examples and the airlines that switch systems: piece concept vs weight concept.

What is the piece concept?

The piece concept counts checked baggage as a set number of bags, each with its own weight cap, commonly 2 pieces of 23 kg in economy. Flights to and from the Americas, and many flights leaving Africa, use it.

How it compares with the weight concept, and which carriers use it on every route: piece concept vs weight concept.

What do 1PC and 2PC mean?

1PC means 1 piece of checked baggage and 2PC means 2 pieces. PC is short for piece, so the code counts bags. Each bag has its own cap, commonly 23 kg in economy and 32 kg in business.

Real tickets from Air India, Kuwait Airways, Emirates, Saudia and Gulf Air: what 1PC and 2PC baggage mean.

What is 158 cm baggage?

158 cm is the most common size limit for a checked bag. The bag's length, width and height, measured with wheels and handles, must add up to 158 cm or less. It's the same limit as 62 linear inches.

The cap is on the total, so a tall narrow bag and a short wide one can both hit it. It's also separate from the weight limit: a bag well under its kilos can still be charged or refused for size.

SpiceJet, Akasa Air, Saudia, Qatar Airways, Oman Air and Gulf Air all publish 158 cm per checked piece. Air India Express caps each piece at 32 kg and 158 cm.

flydubai and Emirates differ. flydubai publishes 159 cm. Emirates allows 150 cm per piece on its piece-concept routes to the Americas and out of Africa, and 203 cm per bag on its weight-concept routes, which cover most other flights, including those from India.

Size caps are per single piece. Figures from our verified data file, checked July 2026.

What are linear inches?

Linear inches are a bag's length, width and height added into one number. Airlines cap that total. 62 linear inches, or 158 cm, is the standard checked-bag ceiling, and 45 linear inches is a common carry-on total.

Measure the packed bag at its widest points, including wheels, feet, the handle housing and any pocket that bulges. Then add the 3 sides together, as if laid end to end.

The classic US carry-on of 22 × 14 × 9 inches adds up to 45 linear inches. Convert each side and round up and you get 56 × 36 × 23 cm, or 115 cm, the single cabin total that Oman Air and Akasa Air publish.

Saudia lets passengers leaving the US or Canada carry one cabin bag of 45 linear inches in every class.

What is excess baggage?

Excess baggage is anything beyond your free allowance. Weight-concept routes charge for each extra kilogram and piece-concept routes charge for each extra bag. Prebooking online is often 15 to 65 percent cheaper than paying at the airport.

Overweight and oversize are billed separately. One bag over its weight and over 158 cm can draw both charges.

No single checked bag may go over 32 kg on almost every airline. That cap protects the ground crew who lift it, so you can't pay your way past it.

SpiceJet sells up to 5 kg of extra cabin weight, so not every surplus has to go in the hold. Estimate your own fee in the excess baggage calculator.

Rates from our verified data file, checked July 2026. Excess pricing changes often and varies by route and station, so confirm the live figure in your airline's Manage Booking.

Where the numbers come from

Every number here comes from the SafarCheck airline data file, checked against official airline sources in July 2026. Where an airline's own pages disagree, as with Etihad's personal item, we say so.

Numbers we can't verify are left out. The allowance printed on your ticket overrides every table on the internet, including these.