Woman avoids excess baggage fee by wearing half her clothes on Thomas Cook flight

She said she was ‘absolutely boiling’

A woman who exceeded the luggage weight limit for her Thomas Cook flight managed to avoid paying the excess fee by wearing seven dresses, two pairs of shoes, two pairs of shorts, a skirt and a cardigan.

Natalie Wynn, 30, was 4kg over the allowance, resulting in a charge of £65, when flying from Manchester to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands earlier in April.

Faced with a fee she was unable to pay – Wynn said she only had around £60 in her account at the time – she was forced to find a creative solution to the extra weight.

“I didn’t want to be using the little amount I had just so I could get my bag on the plane,” Wynn told the Irish Sun. “I literally said, ‘I’m not paying it’, and started putting my clothes on.”

Her friend, whose hand luggage was also over the weight limit, followed suit, to the cheers of other passengers.

Natalie's friend followed her example (Kennedy News)

They were “absolutely boiling” as a result, but both were allowed onto the plane without paying the excess baggage charge.

Feeling like she was going to pass out, Wynn stripped off the extra clothes as soon as she got on the aircraft and put them back in her bag.

Some passengers laughed, watching her and her friend peeling off layers of clothes.

Wynn said it put her in a “good mood” for the start of the all-inclusive holiday and that she was relieved they didn’t get any negative reactions.

A Thomas Cook spokesperson commended Natalie’s ingenuity and said: “The good news for Natalie and the rest of our customers, is that later this month we are increasing our hand baggage allowance to 8kg.

“This will hopefully help her travel a little less like Joey from Friends next time.”

Wynn is far from the first passenger to get around excess baggage fees by “wearing” luggage.

A Ryanair passenger got around the airline’s less generous free hand luggage policy, introduced in November 2018, in ingenious style.

Unwilling to pay £6 extra to take a second bag into the cabin or £8 to check a 10kg bag into the hold each way, Lee Cimino, 30, took matters into his own hands by converting an old coat into a wearable suitcase.

In preparation for his birthday Belfast trip, Cimino took an old beige coat to his local tailor and asked them to customise it with pockets and compartments.

He managed to fit the entire contents of a roll-on cabin bag into the lining of the coat: toiletry bags were sewn in, as well as several pairs of pants to provide extra storage.

“The worry and the nerves were something else, but I got to the gate and boarded the plane with zero issues,” he said.