Mike and L2S

You Yanks are probably OK. You get a higher luggage weight allowance than other nationalities.

If I remember right you get around 70 lbs which is roughly 30 kgs. The rest of us get 20 kgs which is about 50 lbs.

This was confirmed to me as I love to have useless, pointless and impossible to win arguments. I asked them if I was American would my luggage be overweight and they confirmed NO, but it didn't apply in my case and there was nothing they could do about it. "The payment office is over there >."

For some reason historically Americans flying internationally have always had different rules. Probably some early international airline agreement.

This may be a trade-off however for the terrible service you get (and all passengers) when flying on an American airline

(That's a joke by the way, but sorry also true and I have flown on at least 30 different airlines from almost as many different countries ).

PS To salve any upset feelings, some national self-criticism. Australia USED to have the absolute worst service, airline attitudes in the world. Especially with regard to luggage. We had a 'duopoly" (ie a dual monopoly) two airline industry and they agreed on all prices, flight times etc so absolutely no competition. One was government owned too. They used to weigh ALL cabin bags and ALL bags had to be put in the little size measuring frames. Almost any weight over the max'm was charged for. All "competing" flights left with 5 minutes of each other then gaps of hours. Prices were very very high and a decade or more later the prices still haven't got back to where they were. I once wrote an economic thesis on the airline industry and its lack of competition, excessive airline safety concerns vs price and competition etc.

Now they are much better.