US Airlines Say Smaller Carry-Ons Are Not In the Cards

New submitter callgen writes: Airlines for America, a trade group for U.S. carriers, has rejected proposed international standards for carry-on bags. Last week, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced an initiative to "optimize" airlines' accommodation of carry-on bags by suggesting a new standard luggage size. It suggested a standard of 55cm x 35cm x 19cm, 58% of the size that Southwest allows. Most standard carry-ons are larger than IATA's recommendations, meaning travelers would have to purchase new luggage if the smaller size was adopted.

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Thing is, while I do agree that a standard unit that allows for easy conversion has its advantages, the Metric System's units do not correlate well to real-world situations. 0 degrees Fahrenheit through 100 degrees Fahrenheit correspond well with the temperature range at which a human can work outdoors without resorting to special equipment. A foot, as it is similar to the anatomical part of the same name, is sized conveniently to work with in the physical world with things that the average person will interact with in arms-reach. A gallon of water is about at the limit of what most people can pour and handle in drinkable liquid.

I don't find the centimeter to be terribly useful, it's too big to replace the quarter-inch where high precision isn't important and the millimeter is too small in the same situations. There is no equivalent to the foot. Degrees Celsius are too far apart to make for gradation on weather maps; when all of the UK is at almost the same temperature on the scale it isn't doing a good job of differentiation. Likewise for tools; it's not common to find fractional units below 1/16 of an inch, but that is still larger than millimeters, so more wrenches and sockets are needed to cover a given size range than with SAE tools, and it's much easier to say above a certain size to stop using 1/16 inch divisions and use 1/8" or 1/4", but there is no clear case for when to start skipping whole-mm sizes.

I do agree that the Metric System works well for science. The relationship between joules, cubic centimeters, and degrees can really make science and engineering easy, and in those realms where the temperatures reach below the units-place digit and where the precision reaches down below tenths of millimeters it makes a lot of sense. It just seems...applied... to everything else whether it fits or not.

Admittedly I grew up in a Fractional world, but it still feels like SI isn't quite right even though it is internally consistent.