Travelers are stuffing basic household item with clothes to avoid flight baggage fees

29 May 2025 By foxnews

Summer travel is in full swing after a record-breaking Memorial Day weekend.

A massive 45.1 million Americans were predicted to travel at least 50 miles from their homes, with 3.61 million Americans flying to their destination.

For those flyers who tend to bring a lot of baggage with them, a viral travel hack involving pillowcases is now apparently helping some passengers avoid checking a bag.

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The pillowcase travel hack disguises clothes and other soft items as a travel pillow.

People are stuffing items into an empty pillowcase - then bringing this item on board for free.

Most airlines allow passengers to bring travel pillows without counting the items as baggage.

Travel expert Francesca Page of New York told Fox News Digital she recently returned from a trip and noticed an influx of people traveling with their own pillows.

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"I always thought it was for in-flight comfort, especially for red-eye flights," said Page.

"However, I came to find out that that isn't the ONLY reason people are taking their own pillows."

Page said that with the "additional tightening of onboard luggage and fees, people will start getting smart about using the case itself to take whatever bulky items can't fit in their bag, because it's not technically considered more than a pillowcase."

Gary Leff, a Texas-based travel industry expert and author of the blog "View From the Wing," told Fox News Digital he saw the hack circulate on social media in 2023 and 2024, too.

"Nobody minds a pillow as an extra carry-on," said Leff.

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"It's not going in the overhead bin, or underneath your seat, usually. So you're betting that it just gets a pass."

"This trick has been talked up enough, I think, that it's become too obvious to work in many cases. At least there's enough risk that it won't that it's probably not worth trying," he added.

Leff said that by bringing more items than allowed just to save on fees, he's seen passengers turn themselves into "human suitcase[s]."

Some passengers are even wearing as many clothes as possible along with stuffing their pockets with additional clothes.