EasyJet promises cash bonus to employees who detect oversized luggage

Brussels – According to a leaked e-mail, airport staff will earn cash for each easyJet passenger who is detected with an oversized bag. 

The staff of Swissport, an airport management company, will receive £1 (approximately €1.15) per bag collected, according to a message sent to staff at seven airports in the UK and the Channel Islands, including Belfast, Birmingham, Glasgow, Jersey, Liverpool, and Newcastle. 

These payments are seen as “rewards for doing the right thing” and are part of the “easyJet gate baggage incentives” scheme, as stated in the email. 

It has also been revealed that ground handlers employed by DHL Supply Chain, another airport services company, at London Gatwick, Bristol, and Manchester airports are also being paid extra for identifying non-compliant easyJet luggage. 

As noted by the Sunday Times, Swissport’s ground handlers earn about £12 per hour. A former passenger service manager at the company said he and his colleagues had no choice but to police the line on oversized luggage. 

“Dealing with people with excess baggage is like dealing with tax evaders,” he argued. “You risk being abused or worse,” the worker added, “Imagine stopping a group of guys during a stag party and telling them, ‘I’m going to have to charge you more than you paid for your tickets to put your luggage in the hold’.” 

This email, sent in November 2023, remains in effect today, instructing that payments should be made directly to the clerk. 

Swissport said: “We serve our client airlines and enforce their policies according to the terms and conditions of their operations. We are highly professional, and our goal is to provide safe and efficient operations, which we do every day for four million flights a year.”

EasyJet stated that it used several ground handling agents at different airports and that they handled pay directly without its supervision. It added that “easyJet is focused on ensuring that our ground handling partners apply our policies fairly and consistently, in a way that is fair to all our customers.” 

“Our policies and options regarding luggage are well known and we remind customers of them at the time of booking, before travel and on the boarding pass, which means,” the company explains, “that only a very small percentage of customers who do not comply will be charged at the airport. 

This ‘breakthrough’ is likely to anger passengers and comes at a time when calls are being made to scrap hand luggage fees altogether. In fact, last month, the European Parliament’s transport committee voted to give passengers the right to an additional free hand luggage weighing up to 7 kg. Under this proposal, travellers would be able to carry one piece of hand luggage of up to 100 cm (measured by the sum of its dimensions), as well as a personal bag, at no additional cost.