Spare baggage - what do airlines do with it?

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Most airlines carry cargo in bulk cargo hold and if a flight for some reason gets passengers who do not bring in a lot of checked baggage as the airline anticipates they will take extra cargo with them if it is available.

For some reason if there is no extra cargo for the given destination then they will fly using lesser fuel which is in a way monetizing of lesser payload. Less weight would mean the plane would need lesser lift which means less drag and some saving in amount of fuel used depending upon the weight.

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Checked baggage is figured based on averages, in the same fashion as passenger weight. It is not counted kilo for kilo against a grand total. Likewise, they use averages for carry on baggage's weight.

Cargo is figured on container / palete counts, as only so many fit in a plane, they can't add more because there is less baggage, unless the lower amount equals an entire container or two less baggage. Containers do have weight limits, but often the container's volume is filled before it's max cargo weight is reached. And most were scheduled for that flight long before they had a checked bag count.

So from a practical point of view there are no extra kilos due to baggage counts.

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