Jean-Benoit Buisson

How I got here

This site began with a question that has nothing to do with any one bag and everything to do with how they are all sold: why does the "cabin approved" case everyone recommended get gate-checked at a budget airline's sizer? Every page I found while looking for an answer had the same shape — a ranked list, a score out of ten, an affiliate button, and not one figure I could check. None of them said which airline's dimensions a case was actually measured against, what a replacement wheel cost, whether a shell was polycarbonate or the cheaper ABS sold at the same price, or that the fix for a wobbling case was usually a €12 wheel rather than a new one.

That is the whole subject. Luggage almost never fails outright; a wheel wears unevenly, a zip pull snaps, a lock jams, and then the whole case gets blamed and replaced. A cabin case gets gate-checked because of a sizer it was never actually measured against, not because it is genuinely too big for travel. A backpack sold on litre capacity turns out to hold far less once the pockets are accounted for. A lock without the real TSA-recognised marking gets cut off during an inspection exactly like an ordinary padlock. None of that is on the front of the box, and all of it decides whether a bag earns its place or ends up back in a cupboard after one bad trip.

So this is the page I wanted and could not find. I read what manufacturers publish, I check every product reference market by market, I follow what things actually cost rather than what they are listed at, and I say plainly when a figure is not published at all. That last part matters more than it sounds: most of the disappointment here comes from a number nobody printed.

I keep notes — the honest specification of each family, the place where the manual contradicts the sales page, which wheel or lock fits which case, and the buying mistake each category invites. This site is those notes, put in order, in five languages, because the same question is asked in French, German, Spanish and Italian and gets a far worse answer in four of them.

I am not a luggage engineer, and I do not pretend to be. What I can do is read carefully, compare honestly, and tell you which figure the maker left out.

What this site covers

Everything listed here is taken from the catalogue of this site, and each entry links to its own page. When the catalogue changes, this list changes with it. It is a list of what is covered — not a list of what I own.

• American Tourister Bon Air Spinner 55 hardside cabin case
• Delsey Shadow 5.0 55 cm hardside cabin case
• Samsonite S'Cure Spinner 55 hardside cabin case
• Travelite Chios Cabin S lightweight hardside case
• Diyife TSA Combination Locks 2-Pack
• ZHEGE TSA 4-Dial Locks 4-Pack

What I care about

Three things, and they shape every page here. The number that gets quoted is usually the wrong one — a case sold on litre capacity rather than on whether it actually clears the cabin sizer of the airline you fly, a backpack sold on a headline weight rather than on hip-belt load transfer, a lock sold as "TSA" without the marking that actually stops it being cut off. What the thing costs over three years decides more than what it costs today — wheels, zips and handles are wear parts, and on entry-level models they can outlast the case or simply not be stocked as spares. And the thing that matters most is rarely on the specification sheet at all: empty weight against a checked-bag allowance, because that is what decides how much of the allowance is left for anything actually packed.

What I am not

I am not a luggage engineer, a travel agent or an airline employee. I hold no qualification in any of them, I have never worked for a manufacturer or for a retailer, and nothing here rests on any professional title. Nothing on this site is destination advice: this site describes a bag — its capacity, its weight, its cabin dimensions — and stops there. In particular, nothing here is a guarantee about what a specific airline or a specific checkpoint will allow on a specific day; those rules are set by carriers and authorities, and are always worth confirming directly. If you are looking for someone whose authority comes from a job title, this is not that site — what each judgement rests on is stated on the page it appears on, and you can read how this site reaches a verdict in full.

How I work

• Every figure names its source: a manufacturer specification, a manual, a standard, or the weight of long-term owner reports.
• No price, product reference or specification is ever invented. Where a figure is missing, the field is left empty and the gap is stated on the page.
• Product references are verified against Amazon before publication, per market. Where a model is not sold in your country, you are sent to a local search rather than to a page that does not exist.
• Where the cheap option wins, the page says the cheap option wins — and where the honest answer is a €12 replacement wheel or a tightened screw rather than a new case, it says that instead.

Why this site exists

Because luggage is sold on the wrong numbers. A cabin case is advertised on its style and says nothing about the specific airline sizer that decides whether it actually boards without a fee. A backpack is sold on litre capacity and not on whether its hip belt genuinely transfers load once it is full. And the parts treated as afterthoughts — the wheel, the zip pull, the handle rail, the lock — are usually the actual fix.

There is also a part of this that is not about buying anything. Most luggage that gets replaced was not worn out; a wheel bearing seized, a zip pull sheared off, a lock was never the TSA-recognised type, and nobody had written down the ten minutes and twelve euros that would have fixed it. A case that "used to roll straight", a backpack strap that frayed at one stitch, a lock that jams every other trip. Those problems are cheap to fix and almost never written down. That is the subject a page full of new luggage is guaranteed to skip. It is not skipped here.

Correcting me

If something here is wrong, tell me and I will fix it and date the correction on the page. Write to [email protected].

Jean-Benoit Buisson · Montrollet, France