Many airlines are today surviving and making up for the high cost of jet fuel by charging my wife for excess baggage every time she flies.

According to an American consultancy firm, a local airline had earned Dh388 million just from the junk my wife and other passengers carry from place to place.

The consultants had studied the financial filings from 116 airlines across the world to find out how much additional revenue they made from excess baggage, fees for flight changes, duty free and other purchases by credit card onboard flights.

The Australian airline topped the list for the largest additional revenue per passenger last year at Dh202.

I have not kept track, but over the years, I think we have spent a fortune in excess baggage fees, paying for stuff that we carted from this region to India and then back again; stuff like old clothes, cheap Dh10 gifts from “Everything for Dh10” shops, and mosquito repellents.

Every year, I would have to go search in the walk-in closet for the portable luggage scale, dust it off, hook it to my wife’s suitcase and lift it up with both my hands. I am not a gym person and I can barely do two pull-ups on the bar that I have installed on the bedroom door frame.

But over the years, I have become stronger and can now do three push-ups with ease and without hitting my nose on the floor.

“Lift it up higher, higher, I can’t see,” my wife would shout like a drillmaster in a military school movie where the hero turns from a slob to a lean, mean, fighting machine.

The portable scale would squeak in protest and my arms would start shivering, as she finally would read out a figure, “26 kilos”!

By the time I had dead-lifted four suitcases like a bodybuilder, I needed to sit down and have a protein shake or a nature’s plus, or whatever it is called.

I had bought a weighing machine to save myself the hassle, but when we put the bulging suitcase on it, we could not see the dial. It was like ordering a ‘paper rava dosa’ (thin pan cakes) at an Indian vegetarian restaurant. For some reason, my wife always orders this thing and it comes on a hidden stainless steel plate and sticks out a good eight inches, from both sides. It symbolises the saying: ‘I have too much on my plate’, and takes it to a much higher level.

A horrendous sound

When we finally arrive at the airport, I see that it is not just us, but everyone else on the flight who has suitcases that are round, not rectangular.

“You want plastic?” asked a man at a counter. I thought it was part of the procedure for check-in and when I put the suitcase on a machine, it made a horrendous, squeaking, tearing sound and the suitcase came out gift-wrapped in clear plastic.

Once when I was travelling in the US, a customs official pointed to my suitcase and asked: “Did you pack this yourself, sir? I thought I was beyond blame for once for the shape of my suitcase and blurted out: “No, my wife did,” and then realised why he had asked that question.

On one flight after weighing, plastic-wrapping and jumping on our suitcases to make them look normal, we landed and found the airline had lost our luggage and sent it to Geneva or someplace where a baggage handler must have wondered what it was and whether he should destroy it.

We had to fill out a form to list what we had packed and could not remember a thing except for a cheap perfume we had bought for a hated relative.