Writer Faked Pregnancy To Avoid Extra Baggage Fees At Airport
Rebecca Andrews, a travel writer fashioned a fake baby bump to sneak in the extra pounds of things that might have cost her to pay to extra baggage fee at the airport. Her planned eventually failed and she was caught at the airport gate while boarding.
In an article she wrote on Escape, she writes she was just trying to avoid paying a $60 baggage fee and was not even guilty in doing so. She writes, “They cancel and delay their flights all the time,” she wrote. “They’re always inflexible with check-in times and if your carry-on is 1g [2 pounds] over the limit you know they’ll slap you with the excess. Their staff wander around with scales at the boarding gate, so you can’t sneak things into your luggage at the last minute because they’ll definitely re-weigh your bags.”
Her ’brilliant’ plan almost worked. She even made a video in her hotel demonstrating all the steps and things to be careful about while executing this plan. Making her laptop’s charger and other small things into a ‘baby bump’ she writes: “Five months is best as you don’t need to change the way you walk.” After hiding her carry-on items safely, she wore thick layers of clothing to disguise all the lumps.
She was ready to execute her ‘brilliant’ plan at the Sydney Airport and was confident about her plan. The first obstacle came when she met with a real expectant mother at the airport. The mom asked her how far along was she and Andrews horridly responded five months and went away. The second obstacle came at the boarding gate, where she was caught.
“I walked very erectly to the gate, and found I was the LAST person to board my flight,” Andrews wrote. “Which was my ONLY mistake — the staff were all paying me attention.” She was checked and there was no problem. The moment she dropped her ticket and there was ‘a noise’. “So they all looked at me again,” Andrews noted. That is when an attendant asked her: “Excuse me! Is that a backpack you have on under your jacket?”
Andrews tried denying at first but was quick to spill her secret out in the open. “URGH OK fine I just triple-layered to make the carry-on weight and not get charged,” she admitted, taking full responsibility for the hidden laptop — but making no mention of her “pregnancy. [The attendant] didn’t care that I was cold, and definitely didn’t care that I was (fake) pregnant,” she wrote. “The game was up. And I had to pay the $60.”
One of the Airlines representative said: “While we appreciate the creativity, our team [is] pretty wise to all the tricks, and most of our customers find it more comfortable to pay a little bit more for an extra 3 kilos [nearly 7 pounds] of carry-on.” Andrew has still not learned her lesson and plans to trick the airport staff again. We hope she learns and pays for the extra fees, rather than making a fool of herself.
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