Marco-YOLO

Many hard-core backpackers, those that have been on the road for several years already, will simply say travel light and pack small so your backpack can be carried on the plane. Easier said than done.

The maximum carry on size backpack for most airlines is 40 liters (45L also has a good chance of success). Any more and you pay $20-30 per bag on discount airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet. Unfortunately I have a 60L pack and Coleen’s is 55L.

Packed for cheapo airline – My pack (right) is supposed to only be 9% larger than Colleen’s but right now it’s well over twice the volume of hers because it’s packed for an Easyjet flight from Dubrovnik to Milan.

So what we’ve been doing for budget flights is overloading my pack and compressing hers to the smallest size the internal frame will allow it to be. That way we only have to check in my bag and we carry hers on-board. We’ve only tried it on two flights so far but it’s worked both times.