Men: Don’t Chintz When Flying with Suits

The discussion highlighted in this post isn’t about flying with execs – that’s another topic for another day. In this thread men discuss the best way to travel with those traditional business attire uniforms – suit jackets and pants.

TrueBlueFlyer initiates the conversation by asking:

I don’t have one of those fancy suit bags, my plan was to take two suits on board in those store bags with the hanger popping out from the top. Would having them require me to check my roll-aboard? Or would they be considered a personal item?

Oh TrueBlueFlyer. Poor, silly, stupid TrueBlueFlyer. Why don’t you just roll ’em up and stuff ’em into the lining of a neck roll. Clearly you are in need of some metrosexual training.

In travel, there are certain things that you don’t want to cheap out on. IMHV, that most definitely includes a good solid suit bag for long-haul travel. ~Newscience

I’ve seen people almost get kicked off a flight for trying to hang a suit in the premium cabin closet (saying “I do it all the time” doesn’t help) and people being forced to stuff it in the overhead, regardless of whether there’s space, and not being allowed to carry it on their lap. ~viguera

Now, in some of us who are missing the metrosexual gene it has been replaced with the “el cheapo” gene. It isn’t easy to find a good suit bag at a reasonable price. It’s sort of along the same theory as high-end hotels charging for wifi – retailers believe that if you need to travel with suits then the cost of a suit bag is of little concern to you. Thankfully, disambiguous1 has discovered where good quality suit bags can be found for a reasonable price:

Not far from my house is a Burlington Coat Factory store. They’re all over the place here in the U.S., and you can find some surprisingly good merchandise if you don’t mind looking. They do carry luggage, and the prices are really very cheap. I picked up a decent garment bag for about $35, equivalent to what I was seeing for over twice as much on the Internet.

Read the thread in its entirety: Traveling with Suits?

Image: “suit bag” by James Creegan. CC BY 2.0.

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