Away Carry-On UK review: does it fit Ryanair, easyJet, Jet2 and KLM?

In 31 years of loading coach holds, I learned to judge a suitcase by its wheels before anything else. Handles wobble and zips split, but wheels are what leave people stranded in a car park in Bruges with a bag that won't go anywhere.

So the first thing I did with the Away Carry-On was turn it upside down on the kitchen floor. Sandra asked if it had done something wrong.

Wheels first

Four double spinner wheels, each pair on a housing moulded into the corner of the shell rather than bolted on. That's a good sign. Bolted housings are where I used to see cracks after a season of kerbs. All eight little wheels spun freely with a flick of the finger and stopped slowly, which tells you the bearings aren't cheap. The shell is 100% polycarbonate, the kind that flexes a little when you press it and springs back.

I bought it in olive green from Away's UK site in early July for £258. Between then and mid-September it came with me on 11 flights with four airlines and four ferry crossings from Harwich. Among the trips: Sandra's cousin's 70th in Belfast, two stays at our winter flat in Albir, family near Utrecht, once by ferry and once by KLM, and a short break in the Algarve. Wheels passed. Next came the tape measure.

My tape measure against Away's figures

I measured it on the hall carpet with a steel tape, then hung it, empty, from the luggage scale that has weighed every bag I've owned for years.

Away's figures hold up. At 3.4 kg it sits in the middle of the pack for hard-shell cabin cases. The listed capacity is 41 litres, but testers who have poured measured volumes into it report less real space, because the rounded corners and the tube for the handle steal some. What actually fits is the better guide, and I'll come to that.

Those three outside measurements decide everything at the gate. And that's where this review gets very British.

Which UK airlines it fits

Most reviews of the Away are written for American airlines, where one cabin size fits most. Here, every airline has its own box. These are the published limits for the main cabin bag at the time of writing, wheels and handles included:

On Jet2 to Alicante and easyJet to Belfast it slid into the sizer without a push. On Ryanair to Faro I didn't even try. At 23.1 cm deep it's more than 3 cm over the 20 cm limit, and a hard shell can't be squashed like a holdall. I paid for a 20 kg checked bag and sent it in the hold, which turned out to be a useful test of its own.

KLM was the nervous one. On the little jet from Norwich to Amsterdam, the crew took every wheeled bag at the aircraft steps and put it in the hold, mine included, and handed it back on the steps at Schiphol. On the way home nobody measured it. On paper, though, it's 1.6 cm too wide for KLM, and I wouldn't bet a gate fee on that luck lasting.

Knowing it fits is one thing. What you can get inside is the next question.

A week in Spain in one clamshell

Open it and it splits down the middle into two equal halves, the classic clamshell. On one side, a padded pad you buckle down over your clothes with two straps. On the other, a zipped panel with mesh pockets. There's also a slim pocket for hanging things and a laundry bag that sits flat under the lid.

Here's what went in for the week in Albir, the trip where it weighed 9.6 kg:

• Compression side: 5 short-sleeved shirts, 2 pairs of shorts, 1 pair of chinos, a light jumper, swimming shorts, 7 sets of socks and pants
• Divider side: sandals, washbag, travel adaptor, chargers, my Kindle, and a jar of Colman's mustard for a neighbour who misses Norwich
• Laundry bag: empty going out, full coming back, as nature intended

The zip went round without a fight, and the scale said 400 grams under Jet2's 10 kg limit. That compression pad earns its keep. Buckle it down and everything stays where you put it, even after the hold on the Faro flight tipped it every which way. My chinos came out with one crease that dropped out on a hanger overnight.

The weak spot is the lack of an outside pocket. To get my anorak out at a cold gate at Stansted, I had to lay the whole case flat on the floor and open it like a book, which earns you looks. I now keep anything I might need on the way in a small shoulder bag.

Two open halves also take up a lot of floor. In our Stena Line cabin on the overnight crossing, the open case covered the floor between the bunks and the door, and Sandra had to step over it to reach the bathroom. She did so twice before the case was banished to the top bunk.

A tight cabin is one kind of test. Ten weeks of terminals and car parks is another.

Terminals, cobbles and ferry ramps

The wheels are why people love this case, and they've earned it. On terminal floors at Stansted and Schiphol it glides beside you and goes where you point it. The long foot-passenger walkway at Harwich International is where cheap wheels start to whine, and the Away stayed quiet from the car park to the ship. After 15 journeys all four pairs still turn freely and track straight.

Thick hotel carpet is harder work, and I pulled it behind me on two wheels there. The cobbles on Elm Hill in Norwich, which I rolled it up and down twice on purpose, were noisy. The case didn't mind. A man walking his whippet did.

The pull handle has four stops. At the top one there's about half a centimetre of side-to-side play, which you feel on sharp turns, and it hasn't got any worse. The carry handles on the top and side sit flush when you let go. Tidy to look at, fiddly to grab when your other hand is full of boarding pass.

"It looks like a very expensive courgette." Sandra, the first time she saw it in olive green

The courgette has worn well. Bin scrapes barely show on a dark shell. The Ryanair hold trip to Faro left a black scuff on one corner, and a melamine sponge took most of it off in a minute, leaving a faint grey shadow you only see if you look for it. Pale shells are another matter: long-term owners of the white and grey versions say every scrape stays.

Durability is partly the case and partly the promise behind it. And that promise has changed.

The warranty has changed

For years Away was known for a lifetime warranty. Buy one today and you get LifetimeCare instead. In short:

• Five years in which Away repairs anything that stops the case working, free of charge
• A possible replacement within those five years if the case can't be repaired
• An optional upgrade, LifetimeCare Pro, stretches cover to ten years for a fee
• Unused cases can go back free within 100 days

From my years round coach holds, most suitcases that die young die from a cracked wheel housing or a jammed handle, and they usually go in the first few years. Five years of repairs covers that window well. If the word "lifetime" is what drew you to Away in the first place, know that it no longer means what it did.

Some owners online have reported zip problems in recent years. Mine has run smoothly throughout and the teeth still look clean. If that changes, this page will say so.

The numbers

Those are the facts on paper. The airline on your next booking decides the rest.

Is it for you?

For what goes inside, my Kindle Paperwhite review explains how five paperbacks became one e-reader and saved me more than a kilo. And if you fly as often as Karen, her AirPods Pro 3 review is about the quietest way to spend a flight.

Alternatives

• Away The Carry-On Flex: an expandable version, handy if you come home with more than you left with. Zip it back in before you reach the sizer.
• Away The Bigger Carry-On: more room for longer trips, but bigger than most UK cabin limits, so treat it as a small hold case.
• A soft cabin bag sized for Ryanair: brands like Cabin Max make bags to 55 x 40 x 20 cm. Less elegant, but they'll never cost you a gate fee.
• Antler Clifton cabin case: a British brand with a lighter shell and a similar four-wheel design, worth comparing in a shop.

Every case I review goes through the same routine: proper trips, a steel tape, the luggage scale and a line in my logbook after each journey (our how we test page explains the rest). You'll find all our reviews on the blog, and what's being tested this month in our tests in progress.

After ten weeks, the Away is the case I reach for on short trips with easyJet and Jet2. It isn't cheap and it isn't for Ryanair. But the wheels would have passed my old car park in Bruges, and I don't say that about many.

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