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LEARN MOREPosted: 11:14 a.m. EDT May 29, 2023
Airline travel can be a hassle at the best of times, and baggage fees add insult to injury.
We've all tried to cheat the system a little, but TikTok user Adriana Ocampo went to comical extremes when her luggage weighed in over the limit on a May trip to Adelaide, Australia, from Melbourne.
She simply took the excess clothing out of her bag and put it on.
In a TikTok video, Ocampo piles on layer after layer of clothes, cracking up a little more each time as she tries to get her 28-pound bag under Jetstar Airways' weight limit of 15 pounds. By the time she's lightened the load enough, she looks like she's trying to smuggle another person under her clothes. The tablet stuffed into her pants is the cherry on top.
"This is how I'm going on the plane," she said in the video. "I'm in tears."
A new travel hack heroine? Not so much.
The postscript to the video announced that she and her traveling companion eventually had to pay Jetstar a $40 fine anyway after airline officials realized what they were up to.
But hey, at least the adventure had an upside: Ocampo's video has racked up over 1.4 million views as of May 29.
So what can you actually do to avoid paying those exorbitant fees? When it comes to luggage weight, not much.
Clothes can't be made any lighter, filling your bag with helium balloons isn't an option, and as Ocampo has demonstrated, 13 pounds of clothing will raise some red flags.
If volume is an issue, compression bags can save you a surprising amount of space. You can also try buying a small item from the airport duty-free store, then pack a few extra things in that bag. Just make sure you plan ahead, unless you want to take your own shot at viral fame.
This story was originally published by Tod Caviness at Simplemost.
