There’s a video clip doing the rounds on social media of a couple of lads at an airport departure gate, waiting to board a flight with a well-known budget carrier.

They have clearly been told by a member of staff that their suitcase is too big to qualify as cabin luggage but, rather than pay the additional charge, they snap the wheels off the case.

As they comfortably fit the newly-resized item into the measuring stand, forcing staff reluctantly to waive them through, a spontaneous round of applause breaks out among the rest of the passengers.

The clip will be heart-warming viewing for anyone who has been in the same position and feels a boiling sense of anger at being asked to pay what can often seem to be arbitrary and capricious penalties.

Arbitrary, because there doesn’t appear to be a valid reason why an item of luggage should cost more than twice the price of a flight ticket because it is an inch too big to fit the sizer.

Or because paying for your bag to be placed in the hold when you are at the gate is almost three times the cost of what it would have been had you paid when booking your flight online.

Capricious, because you have taken the same case into the cabin on several previous flights with the same airline without incurring any additional cost.

I recently stood in a queue behind a group of young Glaswegians returning home after what had evidently been for them an enjoyable city break in Krakow.

They were in buoyant and jovial mood until one of their number, a girl in her early twenties, was plucked from the queue by a surly functionary and ordered to pay a £100 charge for her suitcase to be placed........

© Herald Scotland