# Extra bags after booking

Sell extra checked bags after the booking is confirmed, priced as the airline filed them for that itinerary and added to the reservation automatically.

Nobody knows how many bags they need on the day they book. They know when they
start packing, which is usually a week or two out, and by then the booking is
long since confirmed and the traveller is somewhere you no longer sell to.

Post-booking baggage sales mean offering additional checked bags after the
booking is confirmed, priced as the airline filed them for that specific
itinerary. It converts because the traveller has started packing and now knows
what they need, and the bag lands on the booking without an agent touching it.

## Bags are the highest-intent purchase in the post-booking window

Most ancillaries ask the traveller to imagine a future preference. A bag does
not. By the time someone is standing over an open suitcase deciding whether the
boots come, the question has already answered itself, and the only thing left is
whether buying the answer from you is easier than buying it from the airline.

That is a rare position to be in. The traveller is not comparing you against
anyone, they are not price-anchored against a fare, and the decision has a
deadline attached to it that they set themselves.

**Insight:** The airline gets a second chance at this traveller at the check-in desk, at a
price the traveller will not enjoy. Selling the bag two weeks earlier is better
for everyone in the transaction except the airport queue.

## The price is a property of the itinerary, not of the airline

This is the part that decides whether the product works. Baggage pricing is
filed by the airline against the fare, and it moves with the route, the
direction of travel, the cabin, the fare family, and how many bags the traveller
has already paid for. Two people on the same aircraft, in the same cabin, on
different fares, are frequently owed different answers.

So the whole game is showing the right price for that fare, on that itinerary,
at that moment. A stored price table cannot do it. It can only be an average,
and an average is a number that is wrong for nearly everyone who reads it.

| The question behind the click | A stored bag price table | The airline's filed content for that itinerary |
| --- | --- | --- |
| How much baggage does my fare already include? | No | Yes |
| Am I allowed to add a bag on this fare at all? | No | Yes |
| What does the next bag cost on this route, in this direction? | No | Yes |
| How many more bags may I add before the airline says no? | No | Yes |

## Eligibility varies, and saying so is part of the sale

Not every fare permits an extra bag, and not every fare needs one. Both of those
are answers worth giving clearly. A traveller told plainly that their fare
already carries two checked bags does not feel sold to, and a traveller told
that their fare will not take a third bag has been saved an argument at the
airport.

The cart therefore leads with what the traveller already has, then offers only
what the airline will actually accept for that itinerary, up to the quantity
limit the airline sets. Nothing on the page is an offer the airline would
decline.

## What your team does about it

1. **Nothing, before the sale**

   The offer is built for the itinerary in front of the traveller when they open the page, so there is no price file to maintain, no airline rules to keep current, and no quarterly exercise reconciling a table against reality.

2. **Nothing, during the sale**

   The traveller chooses the bags they need and pays once, for everything in the cart, in the currency you already sell in.

3. **Nothing, after the sale**

   The bag is written back to the reservation automatically. No agent action, no work queue, and no gap between the traveller paying and the traveller being able to see it in their booking.

That is the whole operational cost, and it is the reason a bag line item is
worth adding even at modest volume. Revenue that requires an agent to touch it
is not really revenue, it is a job with a margin attached.

## The arithmetic is yours to run

The sum is simple enough to do on the back of an envelope, and we would rather
you did it with your own numbers than ours. Take the bookings you confirm in a
month, multiply by the share of those travellers you believe would buy a bag if
they were asked at the right moment, and multiply again by your own margin on a
bag.

We deliberately do not supply the middle number. Any figure published here would
be somebody else's traffic, somebody else's route mix, and somebody else's
audience, and it would tell you nothing useful about yours. Run it against your
own reporting, then judge the product against that.

Bags also pair naturally with the other thing travellers reconsider once the
trip is real, which is where they are sitting. Both sit in the same cart, take
one payment, and reach the booking the same way. The
[seat selection page](/platform/seat-selection) covers that side of it.

## See it priced against one of your own itineraries

The quickest way to judge bag pricing is to watch it load a real booking and check the numbers yourself.

[Talk to us](mailto:hello@departcart.com)

## Frequently asked questions

### Why not just publish a bag price table for each airline?

Because the price is a property of the itinerary, not of the airline. The same carrier charges differently by route, by direction, by fare, and by how many bags the traveller has already bought, so a stored table is wrong more often than it is right.

### What if the traveller's fare already includes checked baggage?

Then the cart says so before it offers anything for sale. Showing an allowance the traveller already has is the fastest way to lose their trust, and it generates a refund request rather than revenue.

### How are quantity limits handled?

The number of bags a traveller is allowed to add comes from the airline's rules for that itinerary, so the cart will not sell a fourth bag to someone who is only permitted three. Nobody arrives at the airport holding something the airline will not accept.

### Does an agent have to action the sale?

No. The bag lands on the booking automatically once payment succeeds, so a bag sale costs your operations team nothing and the traveller sees the change in their own booking.

### Which bookings can carry a post-booking bag sale?

Bookings held in Sabre, with baggage content sourced through both ATPCO filed content and NDC, so the offer reflects what the airline actually filed for that fare rather than a general rule of thumb.