PAL Airlines lists its carry-on and personal item limits only in inches. There is no centimeter figure on the page. That is an odd choice for a Canadian carrier, since Canada runs on the metric system for nearly everything else.
PAL Airlines baggage rules for carry-on bags
The carry-on allowance is one piece per passenger. It is capped at 21 x 9 x 15 inches, roughly 53 x 23 x 38 cm if you need a metric read. That conversion is ours, not a figure PAL itself publishes.
PAL does not post a weight limit for the carry-on bag, only the size.
The personal item allowance
PAL Airlines baggage rules also cover a second, smaller bag. A purse or personal item can measure up to 16 x 6 x 13 inches, about 41 x 15 x 33 cm. This is separate from the carry-on, so both can travel with you into the cabin.
Checked baggage size and weight
A checked bag can weigh up to 50 pounds, close to 23 kg. It must not pass 62 linear inches, meaning length plus width plus height added together. That limit applies per bag, not per passenger.
What each fare includes
PAL sells four fare families: Basic, Standard, Flexible, and Freedom. The checked bag price changes sharply between them. Basic charges $40 to $46 CAD for the first bag and $80 to $92 for a second.
Standard drops the first bag to $20 to $23. Flexible includes the first checked bag free, and Freedom includes the first two free. A third bag costs $100 to $115 CAD on every fare, no exceptions listed.
Overweight bags and the cargo cutoff
Bags between 50 and 70 pounds are not refused, they are billed. PAL charges $100 to $115 CAD in excess baggage fees for anything in that range. Past 70 pounds, PAL will not check the bag as luggage at all.
It has to move as freight through PAL Airlines Cargo instead, a separate booking with its own process. That is a firmer cutoff than the sliding overweight fees most US carriers use. A very heavy bag is worth weighing at home before you build a trip around it.
What travelers actually report
Community reviews of PAL Airlines are thin compared to a major carrier, and searches for ‘PAL’ mostly surface an unrelated Asian airline that shares the same short name. Filtering those out, the pattern that does turn up is not about size or gate sizers.
Travelers report bags being bumped off a flight without notice and arriving on a later one, and describe checked bags occasionally routed to a stop the passenger never visits. PAL’s fleet is small turboprops on thin regional routes, and a few reports tie this to capacity limits on those aircraft rather than to any published size or weight rule. Treat that as a boarding and routing risk more than a sizer risk, and keep anything essential in your carry-on rather than the checked bag.
Liquids and carry-on prep
Standard security rules apply in the cabin. Each container of liquid, gel, or aerosol must be 100 ml or 3.4 oz or smaller. All of them together need to fit in one clear, closed, reusable plastic bag per passenger.
This matches the rule used across Canada and the US, so nothing about it is specific to PAL. Pack it near the top of your carry-on so it comes out fast at the X-ray line.
Sporting gear and musical instruments
Sporting equipment generally counts as a standard checked bag on PAL. Bicycles are billed at $100 to $115 CAD regardless of fare. Musical instruments valued above roughly $2,100 CAD are routed through cargo rather than checked as luggage.
Comparing PAL to bigger carriers
PAL Airlines baggage rules read closer to a regional carrier’s than a mainline one. Compare them against a bigger network airline like Delta or a legacy carrier like United and the fee structure looks familiar. First bag is cheap or free on the top fare, pricier on the bottom one.
Two other small regional operators worth a look are Cape Air and Silver Airways. Both run similarly sized aircraft with their own quirks. If your bag is close to any of PAL’s limits, run it through our size checker first.
The bottom line
PAL Airlines baggage rules are simple to summarize: one carry-on, one personal item, both sized in inches only. The checked bag structure rewards booking Flexible or Freedom if you already know you are checking a bag. The 70 pound cargo cutoff, and the risk of a bag getting bumped to a later flight on these small regional aircraft, are the details most travelers miss.
You can confirm current pricing directly on the PAL Airlines baggage page before you buy. Use our baggage cost tool to price out your fare and bag combination, and check our editorial policy to see how we verify figures like these directly against the carrier.
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