When she heard how much US Airways was going to charge to check her suitcase for a recent flight to Houston from Washington, Mary Barber took drastic action. At the check-in counter agent's suggestion, the Washington resident ran into a store at the Reagan National terminal and snapped up a neon-green nylon bag on sale for $6. She stuffed what she could from her suitcase into it. The remainder went into a cloth Whole Foods tote she had packed in her bag. Then Barber called her mother and asked her to come pick up the suitcase she had unloaded because it was over the 50-pound weight limit for checked luggage, thanks to some serious overpacking for a two-week visit with her daughter. The price for checking a bag for most passengers in coach: $25. The price for checking an overweight bag: an additional $50. That was $75 more than Barber was willing to pay. 'I hate it,' she said, of airlines' growing penchant for levying hefty baggage fees. 'It's already expensive for a ticket.' Barber was doing her best to channel George Clooney's checked-bags-are-for- suckers character in the Oscar-nominated movie 'Up in the Air.' Who can blame her? Last year, airlines reported nearly four cases of mishandled bags among every 1,000 passengers, even as they started charging more for checked luggage to increase revenues. As a result, passengers are increasingly _ and frantically _ searching for alternatives. They are packing their belongings more methodically into carry-on bags (and carrying too many of those onboard), leaving behind items they would normally travel with, shipping luggage to their destinations, or deliberately taking oversize bags to the gate in the hope that gate agents will check them for free. Ever-changing fees, meanwhile, are just the latest wrinkle in a chaotic baggage situation confronting today's airline passengers. Add it to heightened security, more overcrowded flights and fewer amenities in the air, and you have to wonder: Could it be the straw that makes airline travelers finally bag it? The failed Christmas Day attempt by the Underwear Bomber to blow up a plane sparked the latest round of baggage-related unpleasantness. Carry-on bags are coming under much more scrutiny, and because there are so many more of them, lines at security checkpoints have gotten more unwieldy. 'It has reached a tipping point as far as a hassle factor,' said Jami Counter, senior director of TripAdvisor Flights, an online flight search tool. 'I think we just have to live with the chaos until the next shoe drops, whatever that will be.' At the same time, passengers are struggling with a bewildering array of rules on carry-on luggage. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) allows each passenger one carry-on bag and one 'personal item,' such as a laptop, a purse, a small backpack, a briefcase or a camera case. But as George Hobica, creator of low-airfare-alert site Airfarewatchdog.com, said, 'The personal item is a somewhat gray area.' The TSA screens any bag that fits through its X-ray machines, but it's up to the airlines to determine carry-on sizes. And they're all different. A JetBlue carry-on can't be longer than 17 inches, for instance, while Frontier allows up to 24 inches. It's also up to the airlines to enforce their carry-on rules, so many have sizers at their check-in counters to let people measure their bags. American even designed new sizers for each of its gates. But on recent visits to two airports, I didn't see a single passenger measuring a bag. The airlines, for their part, insist that there's no problem with bootleg baggage and that their employees can catch anyone trying to break the rules. But that can be tough to do when your workforce is shrinking. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, U.S. airlines had 3.3 percent fewer employees in November 2009 than they had the previous year. So it's no wonder that Harry Peachey managed to get a red suitcase, a duffel bag and a laptop bag through security and onto a United Airlines flight from Columbus, Ohio, to Washington a few weeks ago. What concerned him was the possibility that the airline would lose his bags. That had happened during a flight in November, leaving him without a change of clothes for a day. He was not about to let it occur again on his way to an elephant meeting in Johannesburg. (He's the elephant manager at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.) His flight from Columbus had been full, which meant that he had to battle other passengers for a coveted spot in the overhead bin. But he won. He had to hold his coat on his lap for the whole flight, but it was worth it, he said. Counter decries such situations for the effect they have on the passenger space on airplanes. 'It has become a little bit of a free-for-all on airplanes and turned them into almost a cargo hold,' he said, creating 'a lot of chaos and confusion from a customer's standpoint.' But at a time when airlines are still trying to lure back customers _ the number of people who flew on U.S. airlines in November 2009 was down 11.3 percent from November 2007 _ industry analysts wonder how much more passengers can take. 'I think the airlines are really pushing it,' Counter said. 'We've reached a breaking point.' At Reagan National Airport, traveler Becky Cattie, pulling magazines and paperwork out of her suitcase to get under the 50-pound limit for a checked bag on American Airlines, agreed. 'I think it's ridiculous, because I think a plane is safer with less carry-on,' she said. 'They should be charging people for carry-ons.' The airlines haven't gone that far _ yet. But after recent fee increases, passengers are paying at least $5 more to check each bag. Virgin America recently raised its baggage fee from $20 to $25 on flights after March 1. That follows similar moves last month by American, Delta, Continental and United, which raised their fees to $25 for the first bag and $35 for the second bag if checked in at the airport ticket counter, kiosk or curbside for domestic flights. (Some airlines offer discounts if you check bags online.) It's apparently a move of necessity. 'In order to entice people onto planes, they still have the $89 one-way coast-to-coast fares,' Hobica said. But 'heavy bags do consume fuel. The airlines are not in the freight business. When people have hundreds of pounds of bags, it does add to the cost. The airlines are trying to recoup that with fees.' They've done a good job of it. The industry took in $1.98 billion in baggage fees during the first three quarters of 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Only Southwest and JetBlue are bucking the trend; Southwest allows passengers to check in two bags for free, JetBlue one. And although Alaska Air charges $15 for the first bag and $25 for the second, it offers a baggage service guarantee that few others do. If a bag does not arrive within 25 minutes of the plane's arrival at the gate, passengers receive either a $25 voucher or 2,500 miles toward a future ticket. The airlines say they are trying to improve their handling of bags. Delta, for instance, will spend $40 million this year to enhance its baggage system to allow for the automated transfer of luggage in Atlanta, its largest hub. The airline also spent $100 million on improvements last year, which resulted in an 18 percent decrease in mishandled bags over the previous year. That's little comfort to travelers such as J.P. Bourget. On a recent flight from Rochester, N.Y., to Washington, he refused to check his bag, even though it obviously exceeded the 45-linear-inch limit for carry-ons. He had printed his boarding pass ahead of time so he could avoid the airline's first layer of defense against oversize bags: the check-in counter agent. 'If you don't check in at the front, the airline doesn't have a chance to get your money,' he said. And he got through the second layer of defense _ the security checkpoint _ even though 'everyone laughed at me all the way through.' Never mind that he was traveling for work and that his company would have reimbursed him for the $25 fee. He simply could not let the airline win. 'They're annoying, just a pain,' he said of the fees. 'All the fees are a pain. There's a fee to pay the fee.' His technique has worked a few times. When he's gotten caught at the gate, the airline has checked his bag for free. As we talked, he eyed me suspiciously. 'Don't ruin it for me,' he said. Bourget may simply have hit a lucky streak. Or flown on the right airline at the right time. Many airlines, such as Alaska Air and Delta, say they will only gate-check a bag for free if it doesn't exceed carry-on limits. 'The general policy we have is if you have followed all the rules in good faith and your carry-on is properly sized, and we've simply run out of space, we'll gate-check it for free,' said Tim Smith, an American Airlines spokesman. 'If someone does not play by the rules, we will gate-check but charge the fee that is applicable.' But flight attendants say that oversize bags often make it into the cabins. 'Once the carry-ons get into the plane, it's chaos,' said Corey Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants. 'It's out of control, and something needs to be done. We're seeing flight attendants with pulled muscles and strains and bruises from trying to manipulate those bags in the overhead bins.' Rep. Daniel Lipinski, D-Ill. is trying to come to their rescue. Last year, he introduced a bill to standardize carry-on sizes to a maximum of 50 linear inches. The airline industry opposes it, saying that planes' overhead bins come in different sizes. 'You can't legislate this kind of thing, and one size fits all literally doesn't apply to every situation or every aircraft type,' Smith said. Still, the airlines acknowledge that overhead bins have gotten crowded. 'It's a lot of bags to accommodate,' said Michelle Mohr, a spokeswoman for US Airways. 'It can be a challenge for a flight attendant to get these guys and bags on board.' They attribute the crowding to the fact that planes are much fuller because there are fewer flights. But it's also true that in some cases, the number of checked bags has dropped. US Airways, for instance, has seen the number of first checked bags fall by about 20 percent and the number of second by about 60 percent. 