United limits carry-on wars: Our view

• Airlines began charging for checked luggage in 2008.
• Not enforcing carry-on limits created another class of customers%3A
• Those who are regularly infuriated by clueless rudeness.

Well, hallelujah. A major airline finally seems to be cracking down on passengers who board planes with carry-ons the size of dumpsters, or who try to game the system at the gate.

Better late than never, United has begun enforcing its rules on the size of carry-on luggage, even turning back some passengers at security checkpoints and requiring them to return to the counter to do what they should have done in the first place.

This is long overdue. Ever since airlines began charging for checked luggage in 2008 (supposedly to offset a spike in jet fuel prices), passengers have responded the way people do when you make one thing expensive and the other free: To avoid fees of $25 or more per flight for checked bags, fliers have been bringing carry-ons into the cabin for nothing, even when they clearly exceed the allowable size.

In a perfect world, all airlines would allow at least one free checked bag. Or they would charge for large carry-ons, or roll everything into the ticket cost instead of nickel-and-diming passengers. The least they can do, however, is to politely carry out their own size limitations.

Those limits have largely been a joke. Airlines have been too short staffed, or too fearful of offending their customers, to enforce them. By catering to passengers who think they have a right to bring aboard anything they can roll or lug into the cabin, and by checking some of these monsters for free when they won't fit, the carriers have created another class of customers: those who are regularly infuriated by this clueless rudeness.

Oversized carry-ons take extra time and effort to stow, delaying departures. Even if the big bags can wedge into overhead bins, they take up more space than legal-sized bags. That's why there's a rush for the bins, and why passengers last to board often have to have their legal-sized bags gate-checked — there's no more room. Of course, airlines have capitalized on this anxiety by charging more to board early.

Predictably, the complaints about United's new policy have already begun: It's really about getting more money from fliers. Passengers need more time to adapt. Gate agents enforce the size limits harshly.

Oh, please. United and its competitors should have done this years ago. Cutting down on the baggage wars inside aircraft cabins will make travel a little less unpleasant. Now if only airlines could also do something about seats that fit passengers the way factory-farm cages fit chickens.

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