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Travel & Luggage Buying Guides

These are the pages with nothing to sell. No rankings, no scores, no affiliate links — just the material you need before a shortlist is any use to you: what the airlines actually allow, which shell materials fail and how, and which specs on a product listing are measurements versus marketing.

A guide here answers a question that outlives any individual product. Cabin size limits do not change when a new trolley launches, and the reason ABS cracks while polycarbonate flexes is a property of the plastic, not of the brand printing its name on it. That is why these live in one place and are linked from every roundup they apply to, rather than being restated in each one.

Every number is read off the source it belongs to — an airline's own published policy page, a manufacturer's technical specification table — and dated, so you can see how old it is and check it yourself.

Buying Guides

Guides

Luggage Brands in India (2026): Who Owns What

Twenty luggage brands sold in India, and the three companies behind most of them. Who owns what, when each brand started, and who is listed on the market.

10 min read
Guides

Luggage & Bag Warranty in India (2026)

What Samsonite, VIP, Safari, Mokobara, uppercase and a dozen more brands publish about warranty terms in India, with a link to every official policy page.

15 min read
Guides

Luggage Buying Guide for India (2026)

Shell materials, wheels, zips, locks and the cabin size rules Indian airlines actually enforce — what to check before buying a trolley bag or luggage set.

11 min read
Guides

Zipper vs Zipperless Luggage in India (2026)

A suitcase zip opens with a ballpoint pen, and no lock stops it. Zipperless luggage in India starts at ₹3,590 — and only one of its two kinds costs you weight.

14 min read

Frequently asked questions

What is the cabin bag size allowed on Indian airlines?

There is no single Indian cabin size. IndiGo and SpiceJet's Boeings publish 55 × 35 × 25 cm, Air India publishes 55 × 40 × 20 cm, Air India Express publishes 56 × 36 × 23 cm, SpiceJet's Q400 turboprops publish 50 × 35 × 23 cm, and Akasa publishes no per-side limit at all — only a 115 cm total. A bag measuring 50 × 35 × 20 cm over its wheels and handles clears every one of them.

Do airlines measure my bag including the wheels?

Yes. IndiGo states it outright — "This dimension includes handles and wheels" — and Air India Express extends it to side pockets as well. Airport sizers are boxes: the bag either drops in or it does not, and the wheels go in with it. A case whose shell is 55 cm tall with 3 cm wheels and a 2 cm handle housing is a 60 cm bag at the sizer.

Which is enforced more, the size limit or the weight limit?

The weight limit, by a wide margin. Indian carriers weigh cabin bags at the counter on essentially every flight, while hard cabin trolleys are rarely put through a dimensional sizer on domestic sectors. That makes a bag's empty weight the spec that decides how much you can actually pack — on a 7 kg allowance, a 3.5 kg case has spent half of it before you open the lid.

Which shell material should I buy?

Polycarbonate if the budget reaches it, polypropylene as the sensible middle, and avoid ABS at any price. Polycarbonate flexes under impact and springs back; polypropylene is heavier but genuinely durable; ABS is rigid, so it cracks rather than bouncing. ABS is common at the bottom of the market and turns up occasionally at mid prices, which is where it catches people out.

Does a longer warranty mean a better bag?

Not on its own. What decides whether a warranty is worth anything is the distance to a counter that will honour it. VIP, Safari and American Tourister run the widest authorised service networks in India and reach most tier-2 cities. Direct-to-consumer brands often print longer warranties but route repairs through courier pickup measured in weeks — fine for a spare case, painful for your only one.