How to make money with spare luggage space

1. The short version

Most people fly with a checked allowance they never use. Twenty-three kilos is a lot of shirts. Meanwhile, somewhere at the other end of your route, there is someone who cannot buy a thing they want because no retailer will ship it to their country — or will, for more than the item costs.

Both of those facts have been true for decades. What changed is that you can now find each other before the flight instead of by luck. You post the route you already booked, people flying nowhere near it never see you, and the ones who need something on exactly your route send a request.

It is not a job and it will not replace one. It is a way of making a trip you were taking anyway pay for part of itself.

2. What the space is actually worth

Anyone who gives you a flat figure is guessing. What a delivery is worth comes down to four things, and the route is only one of them.

• How stuck the item is. A phone case that ships anywhere is worth almost nothing to carry. Something a shop sells only in person, in one city, is worth a great deal — because there is no second way to get it.
• What it displaces. Something flat and light costs you nothing. Something that fills half a suitcase costs you space you were going to use. Price that honestly to yourself before you quote.
• How rare your route is. London to New York has a traveler on it every hour. If you are flying somewhere with two flights a week, your space is scarce and the reward should reflect that.
• How soon they need it. Someone who needs a thing before a birthday is in a different position from someone who is browsing.

On GetFlyPass there is deliberately no price field on a listing. The reward is settled between the two of you in chat, once you both know what the item actually is. Any formula we invented would get a pair of headphones from Tokyo and a document from Berlin equally wrong.

Two practical notes. Agree who pays for the item and who covers any duty before anyone spends money — that is the argument that ruins otherwise fine deliveries. And be wary when the reward drifts far above what the errand is worth: an unusually generous offer is not good luck, it is the warning sign in the next section.

3. The rule worth more than any fee

Never carry a sealed package whose contents you have not personally seen. Not for a stranger, not for someone charming, not for someone who says it is a present and the wrapping took ages. If you cannot open it and look, you decline. No fee makes this worth it.

This is not a formality. The oldest trick played on travelers is to hand them something to carry without saying what is inside, and the person holding the bag at the border is the person who answers for it. “Someone asked me to bring it” and “I did not know” are not defences you can rely on. People are serving long sentences, in countries with severe drug laws, for precisely this.

The safe version of the same errand is easy: you see the item, unwrapped, before it goes in your bag. If the buyer wants it gift-wrapped, they can wrap it after you hand it over. Anyone who resists that is telling you something.

Two habits go with it. Pack the item yourself, into your own bag, and keep the bag with you. And keep the receipt — it shows what the thing is, what it cost, and that it was bought rather than acquired some other way.

Beyond that there is a longer list of things no traveler should agree to move at all, and a set of destinations that are closed regardless. It is worth reading once, properly: the items and routes GetFlyPass does not allow.

4. You are the importer, not a courier

This is the part people get wrong, and it is worth being blunt. When you walk through the border with an item in your bag, you are not a courier delivering a parcel. As far as that country is concerned, you are a passenger importing goods. The officer talks to you, the allowance applied is yours, and any duty is assessed against you.

That has three consequences.

• The allowance is per person, and you only get one. Anything you are carrying for someone else stacks on top of your own shopping. Both count toward the same limit.
• Quantity changes the category. One laptop reads as personal. Five identical sealed phones reads as a commercial import and gets treated as one — duty, and sometimes a licence.
• Settle duty in advance, in writing. Put it in the chat. If an item would clearly blow past the destination allowance, the right answer is to decline or split it across trips, not to hope.

Declaring is almost always cheaper than being found. The cost of an undeclared item is not the duty you avoided; it is that duty plus a penalty, and sometimes the item itself.

5. What your airline allows

Customs is one gate. The airline is the gate before it, and its rules have nothing to do with borders.

• Lithium batteries. Power banks and spare batteries travel in the cabin, never in the hold. A battery sealed inside a device is usually fine checked; a loose one is not. This is the most common reason a bag gets opened.
• Liquids. Over 100 ml the cabin is out. Perfume and cosmetics catch people constantly, and they are exactly what buyers ask for.
• Aerosols, lighters, flammables, magnets. Restricted or banned outright, and the limits differ between airlines flying the same route.
• Food, plants, seeds, soil. Your airline may not care; the agriculture inspector at the other end will. Fresh food between certain country pairs is forbidden entirely.

Check your own carrier for your specific flight rather than trusting a general list — including this one. Rules differ by airline, by aircraft, and sometimes by season.

One more thing to price in: if the item pushes you over your weight allowance, excess baggage is charged at rates that will swallow the whole reward. Weigh the bag before you agree, not at the desk.

6. How a handover actually goes

The mechanics are less dramatic than people expect. Someone on your route sends a request. You look at it, ask what the item actually is, and decide. Nothing is automatic and nothing obliges you to accept.

If you agree, three things get settled in chat before anyone spends money: what the item is, who pays for what, and where you are meeting on arrival. The arrivals hall is the usual answer, because it is public, it is on your way out, and neither of you has to travel to reach it.

For anything valuable, photograph the item at pickup and again at handover. It takes four seconds and it settles every argument that could follow. GetFlyPass does not hold your money and is not an insurer — what it gives you is a record: the listing, the conversation, both profiles, and a report button that puts a moderator on it. A photograph is what makes that record worth something.

Afterwards you both leave a review. On a route where nobody knows anybody, your delivery count and rating are the entire reason the next person picks you.

7. Before you say yes

Run through this. It takes a minute and it is the difference between an easy trip and a bad one.

• Have I seen the item, unsealed, with my own eyes?
• Could I describe it to an officer in one sentence?
• Is it legal to take out of where I am, and legal to bring into where I am going?
• Does it fit my allowance — airline weight and customs value?
• Is there a battery, a liquid, an aerosol, a plant or a food in it?
• Have we agreed in writing who pays for the item and who pays any duty?
• Do I have the receipt?
• Is the reward proportionate — or suspiciously good?
• Am I comfortable meeting this person in a public part of the airport?

Any single “no” is reason enough to decline, and declining costs you nothing. There is another request on the next flight.

8. Where a platform fits

None of this requires a website. People have carried things for each other forever, through family, friends and forum posts. What a platform adds is narrow: it finds someone on your exact route, and it gives you a history to judge them by.

On GetFlyPass you post the route and times from a ticket you already booked, tick what you are willing to carry, and wait. Buyers on that route send requests and you accept the ones you want. Browsing, posting and messaging are free. There is no price field — you and the other person settle the reward yourselves, and the platform does not take a cut of it.

If you want to see the whole flow first, there is a short walkthrough of a request from posting to handover. If you already know how it works, post the flight you have booked — it takes under a minute.

This page is general information, not legal or customs advice. Allowances, restricted goods and airline rules change, and they differ by route. Check the official guidance for your own destination before you fly.