Plane passenger layers on clothes to avoid excess baggage fee
A Filipino airplane passenger decided to take matters into her own hands when she was told that she needed to pay an excess baggage fee at the airport.
Earlier this month, Gel Rodriguez was on her way to board a flight when she was told at the check-in counter that her baggage exceeded the 7-kilogram (15.4-pound) weight limit. Her luggage had reportedly weighed nine kilograms (19.8 pounds).
Not one to spend money unnecessarily, the woman she decided to layer on her pants, shirts, jackets and long-sleeved tops, she told Vice on Tuesday.
"I didn't want to pay the fee for the excess baggage because it was only 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds)," she recalled.
Rodriguez somehow managed to get the weight of the baggage down to 6.5 kilograms (14.3 pounds) and shared a photo of her triumph with the hashtag #ExcessBaggageChallengeAccepted.
The image has since gone viral on Facebook. As of Friday afternoon, it has been shared more than 20,000 times and gotten nearly 1,000 comments.
"Gel you made my day hahaha," one person wrote.
In an interview with Vice, Rodriguez said she did not expect to receive so much attention for her picture.
"If I had known it would go viral, I would have posed better," she joked.
Other passengers have similarly tried to avoid paying excess baggage fees by layering on clothes.
In April, a British woman wore almost nine pounds of clothing to skip out on paying Thomas Cook Airlines an $85 overweight baggage fee.
"I didn't want to be using the little amount I had just so I could get my bag on the plane," she told the Sun. "I literally said, 'I'm not paying it', and started putting my clothes on."
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