An airline flagged my oversized carryon bag — but young, hot passengers with the same luggage were let on
She felt like they benefited from pretty privilege.
A senior UK passenger claims she was discriminated against by Ryanair after having to pay a $100 bag-checking fee while younger, “attractive” passengers boarded without penalty.
“I’m absolutely disgusted with Ryanair! I’ve just been held up for 20 minutes because they said my cabin bag was too big and I must pay an EXTRA £75 for it to go in the hold,” Maxine Haughian, 63, fumed in a Sept. 10 Facebook post. “Alternatively I can leave it and forfeit the bag and its contents!”
She added, “It’s funny (not funny) how other bags that are exactly the same were allowed through without comment. It’s a good job I took the photo of this (gorgeous) girl pushing her case into the box and being allowed through.
“I’m obviously not young or good-looking enough!!!!!”
Included in her post was a photo of said passenger, who was younger and sported pink hair, short shorts and flip-flops.
The mother-of-two and grandma-of-11’s saga occurred last month while she was boarding a Ryanair flight from Leeds, UK, to Alicante, Spain, Kennedy News and Media reported.
She had reportedly been stopped in line so they could measure her bag.
The York resident found the measure peculiar as she’d previously flown issue-free on the airline with the same suitcase, which she owned for 10 years.
She claimed that the bag fit in the guidance rack, only sticking out “very slightly” by 2 centimeters on the side, which was apparently too much for the supervising official.
“He said the measurements are on the site and it clearly states they’ve got to sit within the lines of the rack,” lamented the traveler, who had paid $32 for priority boarding. “It seemed so unfair. The bag did fit in.”
As a result, authorities tried to slap the sexagenarian with a $98 bag-checking fee.
Things seemed to get even more unfair for the bedraggled Brit after officials started seemingly randomly selecting people to charge regardless of their suitcase size, according to Kennedy News.
“People were walking past with bags that would clearly not fit in the guide rack and they weren’t even being stopped,” Haughian lamented. “And a number of people were charged £75 on the spot.”
The perturbed passenger added, “Several people had suitcases that looked exactly the same as mine, and they were putting them in the rack and it was sticking out a bit — but they were allowed to go through.”
That’s when Haughian felt that authorities were discriminating against people based on their appearance.
She noted that they let the aforementioned “young and attractive” woman whom she photographed through without a feed despite the fact that her bag was also oversized.
“I can’t see what reason there would be for that to have happened — for it to be OK for some people to go through and not for me to go through,” she griped to Kennedy News. “And in that instance, the only thing that differentiates us was the fact that that was a young, good-looking female and I’m not young.
“It’s not like I’m some hag or anything, but I am older.”
The fed-up flyer said she eventually was allowed through — without getting charged extra — after showing authorities a photo of the other woman and her bag.
“I’m stressed to high hell and hope I can calm down and get into holiday mode before we land,” vented Haughian in the post.
In retrospect, Haughian feels that while she may have overreacted a tad, she has no other explanation for getting singled out other than her age and looks.
“That remark [about her being younger than me] was a little bit facetious,” Haughian told Kennedy News. “I guess I was just angry at the time and felt like, ‘Why else are you letting this person through?’ Because to me, I can’t see anything that differentiates that person or her bag and me and my bag, other than the fact that person is significantly younger than I am.”
Haughian said that ultimately she believed that the policy was a “money-making” scheme and further claimed that she was shaken down because she was older and therefore more “compliant” in their eyes, adding that “a lot of people just paid the money.”
“It was the inconsistency of it all,” she concluded. “If you’ve got rules, they should be applied evenly and equally.”
The Post reached out to Ryanair for comment.
