Waylighter Articles

Reporting on the real cost of flying with your gear.

Baggage fees. Gate-check risk. What actually happens between the counter and the carousel. We do the arithmetic so you don’t have to.

A Southwest Airlines 737 at the gate at sunset.

Industry

The end of “Bags Fly Free.” Sixteen months in, the American airline baggage market looks like a cartel.

Southwest was the last major US carrier to check your bags for free. It killed the policy on May 28, 2025, then raised the new fee eleven months later. What’s left is a five-airline pricing grid where the numbers no longer differ.

The Waylighter Editors·6 min read
A golf travel bag at the jet bridge threshold at dusk.

Golf

The gate-check moment. What actually happens to your clubs after you hand them over.

Rory McIlroy lost his clubs flying to the Irish Open. Ben Griffin lost his flying to the Genesis. If touring pros can’t get their bags off the plane, why do the rest of us keep trying?

The Waylighter Editors·8 min read
A family of four beside a luggage cart piled with ski bags.

Ski

We added up what a week of skiing costs a family of four. The luggage line item stopped us cold.

A week in Vail is expensive. Lift tickets, lodging, a rental SUV big enough for the ski bags. But it wasn’t any of those numbers that broke us. It was the baggage math.

The Waylighter Editors·7 min read