Conor Pope

It protects you financially.

But they need to know that they're protected financially.

So sometimes people will say, OK, well, I'll pay the excess insurance on the desk and it'll cost me an extra 200 quid.

But it means they're not taking a huge deposit off me.

And to be perfectly honest, like...

I know a lot of people say don't take out the excess insurance in the airport because you're paying through the nose for it.

You are paying through the nose for it.

But if anything goes wrong with the car, you can kind of wash your hands of it and say, I have the full insurance with the individual company, so I'm sorted.

It really depends on what your budget is and what your capacity for risk is.

Well, because human beings tend to be slightly more forgiving of excess baggage than machines.

So, and I'm not just referring to Aer Lingus.

In my experience, Ryanair crew and Ryanair staff are also very forgiving.

So if you've got a 10 kilo baggage allowance and you've got 12 kilos, most staff will go at your grant and they let you through.

Machines aren't so forgiving.

So they'll charge you the extra 26 quid for the excess baggage.

because the machine knows no other way.

It's one of the difficulties of the robot world that we're going to live in in the future.

So I always think it's better to deal with the human being in these scenarios.

And they have that degree of flexibility that machines don't have.

Now, having said that, I've also gone on planes when I've been a kilo or two over the limit and the human being has been incredibly mean and said, yeah, that's 26 euros and you've got to go over to this new desk and you've got to pay this.