62 Linear Inches Luggage: What It Means and What Fits

Take a tape to your suitcase and write down three numbers: how tall it is, how wide it is, how deep it is. Add them. That sum is the linear measurement, and 62 inches is the ceiling almost every carrier applies to a standard checked bag. A case that measures 28 by 20 by 12 comes to 60 and travels free of argument. The same case at 30 by 21 by 13 comes to 64 and does not.

Airlines use a sum rather than three separate caps because they care about volume in a container, not about proportion. A long thin bag and a short fat one take up roughly the same space in the hold, so one number covers both shapes. It also means you can trade: a deep bag is allowed as long as it is short, and a tall bag is allowed as long as it is slim.

The measurement is taken over the outside of the bag, and that is the part that catches people. Spinner wheels, the retracted handle housing, corner feet, a padlock loop, the fat side pocket you loaded with shoes: all of it counts. A suitcase sold as a 28 inch case is 28 inches of body, and the wheels and handle push the real height closer to 30. We walk through the tape work in how we measure, and there is a longer version in how to calculate linear inches.

Three numbers in, one number out, plus the list of airlines that would have a problem with it. Switch to centimetres if that is what your tape reads, and the whole page follows.

We flag a bag that lands within an inch of a limit instead of passing it, because that inch is exactly what a soft side gains when it is packed full, and because a desk agent measuring with a tape rounds up, never down. If your total is 61.4, you are technically fine and practically at the mercy of whoever is working the counter.

The gap between what a reader measures at home and what an agent measures at check-in is almost always one of four things.

• Measure the bag packed, not empty. A soft-sided case gains an inch or more across the depth once it is full, and that is the state it will be in at the airport.
• Run the tape over the wheels and the handle housing, not from the bottom of the shell. Airlines say so explicitly, and Korean Air, Iberia and KLM put it in writing on their own baggage pages.
• Measure the widest point of each face, including pockets and any expansion zip you have opened. An expanded case is a different bag as far as the sum is concerned.
• Round up to the nearest half inch. Nobody has ever won an argument at a check-in desk over two tenths of an inch.

If you would rather see it than read it, the luggage size visualizer draws your dimensions against the common limits, and how to measure a suitcase covers the mistakes that come up most often.

Oversize is charged per bag and per direction, so a round trip pays it twice. It also stacks with the overweight fee, which is a separate line item with its own threshold, and a bag that is both big and heavy collects the pair. On the major North American and transatlantic carriers the oversize charge on a single bag sits in the same territory as a decent mid-size suitcase, which is the arithmetic that turns one bad measurement into an expensive trip.

Airlines split into two camps at the counter. Most publish a hard ceiling and refuse anything beyond it outright, so an oversize bag becomes cargo or stays behind. A smaller group publishes a flat oversize charge instead and takes the bag, which is the friendlier outcome and the more expensive one. Japan Airlines is the clearest example of the second camp: it allows 80 linear inches and prices anything beyond that rather than turning it away.

Worth knowing before it matters: an oversize bag that gets handled as freight is not always covered the way ordinary checked baggage is. We set out what airlines actually owe you in damaged luggage claim rules and in airline compensation for lost or delayed luggage.

Sorted by name, searchable, and switchable between inches and centimetres. The weight column is the standard economy allowance, so a fare that buys its baggage separately will differ. Every row carries the date we last checked it and a link into that airline’s own baggage pages, labelled for what the link opens: a checked baggage page where the airline publishes one, its cabin page where the two allowances share a section, and an archived snapshot for the one carrier that has stopped flying.

Two patterns are worth reading out of that table. The first is how few genuine outliers there are: the overwhelming majority sit on 62 inches, and the ones that do not are mostly more generous, not less. The second is that the low-cost carriers are the ones most likely to publish no linear sum at all, capping each side instead, which is a different test your bag has to pass. Carry-on rules are a separate question with far more variation, and we keep those in the luggage size chart.

Sixty-two inches converts to 157.48 centimetres, which is a number no airline wants to print. Most round it up to 158 and a handful round it down to 157, and the difference is real enough to matter at the margin: Delta, Alaska, JetBlue, Southwest, Hawaiian, Breeze, Avelo, Sun Country, WestJet and Caribbean Airlines all publish 157, while the European and Asian carriers almost uniformly publish 158.

This is why the calculator compares your bag in the unit you typed rather than converting first. A bag measured at 158 centimetres is inside a 158 centimetre limit and outside a 157 one, and rounding it through inches on the way would hand you the wrong answer on both.

In practice it is a large checked case, around 28 to 30 inches tall, and most people never come close. The medium checked spinner that sells in the greatest numbers sits several inches under the line: the Samsonite Freeform 24 inch measures 27 by 18.5 by 12, which is 57.5 linear inches, and the Travelpro Platinum Elite 25 inch softside measures 28 by 18.5 by 11.75, which is 58.25. That leaves four and a half inches of headroom on the Samsonite and just under four on the Travelpro, and both are reviewed in full in our Samsonite Freeform review and Travelpro line guide.

The bags that get caught are the 30 and 32 inch cases, expandable models flown with the zip open, and wheeled duffels packed round instead of flat. If you are picking a bag and not measuring one, our best hardside luggage picks and the wider luggage reviews index list the measured linear inches for every bag we have handled, and the travel gear database lets you filter the whole catalogue by size.

Does 62 linear inches include the wheels and the handle?

Yes, on every airline we have checked. Several say so in the sentence itself: Korean Air writes “including handles and wheels”, Iberia includes the handle, pocket and wheels, and KLM spells out length plus width plus height including handles and wheels. Measure the bag as it stands on the floor, wheels down and handle retracted.

Is 62 linear inches the same as 158 centimetres?

Near enough for shopping, not always for check-in. The exact conversion is 157.48 centimetres, and airlines round in both directions. If your tape reads centimetres, switch the calculator to centimetres and compare against the number the airline publishes rather than converting your own.

Can I check a bag over 62 linear inches?

Usually yes, for money, up to a second and much higher ceiling that varies by carrier. Beyond that ceiling the bag is refused as baggage and has to travel as cargo. A few airlines publish no linear sum at all and cap each side instead, and those rows are marked “not published” in the chart with the per-side numbers alongside.

Do all airlines use 62 inches?

No, and the exceptions run both ways. Japan Airlines and Allegiant allow 80 inches, Etihad allows 118, easyJet allows 108, and Emirates and Qatar Airways publish one figure on piece-concept routes and a much larger one on weight-concept routes. Qantas is the one that catches people in the other direction: 62 inches internationally, 55 inches on Australian domestic flights.

What about carry-on and personal item sizes?

Different question, far more variation, and a separate chart. The luggage size chart covers cabin bags and under-seat items for the same set of airlines, and best carry-on luggage covers the bags that pass most of them.

Where do these numbers come from?

Every figure was read off the airline’s own published baggage information, and every row carries the date we last checked it. The link on each row says what it opens, because airlines file their allowances differently: some publish a separate checked baggage page, and some cover cabin and checked together in one section. One row, PLAY, comes from an archived snapshot because the airline has stopped flying, and it is flagged in the chart. Our sourcing rules, and what we do when an airline publishes no number at all, are set out in how we measure.