EasyJet has refunded an Icelandic traveller and his teenage daughter a combined £96 after admitting that a luggage size checker at Gatwick Airport was faulty. Adalsteinn Svan Hjelm was charged £48 per bag even though his Samsonite suitcases met the airline's official cabin bag requirements.
The incident occurred in April while the pair were transiting through Gatwick on a journey from Iceland to Greece. Ground crew subjected their luggage to a sizing cage check and insisted the bags were non-compliant, despite them being within easyJet's stated limits. Hjelm told consumer champion Which? that he suspected the equipment itself was to blame.
"I suspected that the baggage sizer itself had been altered. The internal side bulkheads appeared to have been positioned incorrectly, reducing the usable width of the sizer and preventing a compliant bag from fitting correctly," he said.
Objections dismissed
Hjelm said he raised concerns with gate staff at the time, but his objections were dismissed and the pair were forced to pay. His main concern was that the metal bars inside the sizing cage had been set too narrowly, making it physically impossible for compliant bags to pass the test. Initial complaints to easyJet's customer service department were rejected, and an appeal to the airline's adjudicator, Aviation ADR, was also turned down.
"What concerns me most is that neither easyJet nor AviationADR independently inspected or physically measured the baggage sizer," Hjelm added. "Instead, the decision relied solely on easyJet's assurance that the equipment was correctly configured."
Refund after Samsonite confirmation
Refusing to accept the decision, Hjelm contacted Samsonite directly, which confirmed that the bags were specifically designed to meet easyJet's limits. He then emailed senior easyJet executives with photo evidence. Only after that did an employee investigate the Gatwick sizer, confirming the metal bars had indeed been incorrectly set. Hjelm received a full refund and easyJet pledged to repair or replace the unit.
A spokesperson for easyJet said: "We always want to ensure our cabin bag rules are applied fairly. The bag sizers are checked weekly, or sooner if an issue is identified, and maintained and if an issue with a bag sizer is identified, it is reported by our ground crew and removed and fixed. Despite the independent Aviation ADR ruling in our favour, we have now provided Mr Hjelm with a refund as a gesture of goodwill."
Which? raises wider concerns
Consumer group Which? has warned that thousands of other holidaymakers may have been unfairly fined by the same faulty equipment. Rory Boland, Editor of Which? Travel, said: "This is the second time we have caught easyJet wrongfully fining travellers to line their own pockets. Who knows how many passengers have been forced to pay a penalty fee because of easyJet's own ineptitude. What we do know is easyJet is profiting from fining passengers for bags it claims are oversized, so it's perhaps unsurprising that it has not committed to take any wider action to review how it checks bag sizes."
It comes after revelations last year that easyJet staff can earn bonuses for catching passengers with oversized luggage.
