Pegasus check-in: on the Light fare, an international flight carries no hand baggage

Hand baggage is included on every fare on Turkish domestic flights — but not on the Light fare when the flight is international.

Every Pegasus flight from the United Kingdom is international, so a Light ticket bought here comes with no cabin bag.

What the Light fare does include is the item that fits under the seat, at 3 kg. That is the whole allowance, and it is the reason the fare is cheaper.

Where this goes wrong is at the gate. A passenger who has read « 8 kg » on a general baggage page arrives with a bag they are not entitled to, and pays for it there — the most expensive place to discover a fare rule.

On the other fares, the hand baggage allowance is 8 kg, and 12 kg on Business Flex. The under-seat item stays at 3 kg throughout.

And nothing is included in the hold on Light either: it is bought separately. Super Eco, Advantage and Comfort Flex include a hold allowance in addition to the under-seat item.

How to read a general baggage page after this. Most of what is published about Pegasus baggage describes the domestic regime, because that is the airline's home market. From the United Kingdom you are always in the other column, and the safest habit is to check which one a page is describing before trusting a number on it — including ours.

Bag drop closes 60 minutes before departure on international flights and on flights to Northern Cyprus.

Inside Turkey the figure is 45 minutes, and that is the number most often quoted — it is not the one that governs a departure from the United Kingdom.

Three airports close their desks one hour before departure: Tel Aviv, Paris-Orly and Sulaymaniyah.

Online check-in closes 60 minutes before departure, the same figure, which makes the day simpler to plan than at airlines where the two deadlines differ.

The consequence for a UK passenger is a single time to remember, and it is the longer of the two that circulate. Reading the domestic figure and applying it here would put you at the desk fifteen minutes after it shut.

One thing this does not change. The 60 minutes is the desk, not the gate: boarding closes on its own schedule, printed on your pass. Arriving at the desk with a minute to spare leaves you nothing for the walk to the aircraft, and on a large terminal that walk is measured in tens of minutes.

We are not giving a size for the Pegasus cabin bag, and the reason is worth stating plainly: the airline publishes two.

Its Turkish page gives 55 x 40 x 20 cm; its German page gives 55 x 40 x 23 cm, both in force on the same day, for the same standard bag at the same 8 kg.

We could pick one. We would be right half the time. The depth is the dimension on which rigid cases fail, so choosing wrong is not a harmless rounding.

What we can tell you is what to do with that. Measure against the smaller of the two if your case is rigid, and treat the difference as the margin you do not have.

This is a limit of the source, not of the airline's honesty — and it is the airline's own two pages that disagree, not us against it.

What would change our answer. A single official page superseding the other, or the airline aligning the two. Until then, publishing one of the two figures would be presenting a coin toss as a fact — and a reader who packs to the wrong depth pays at the gate for our confidence.

Online check-in opens 7 days before departure, on domestic and international flights alike.

The window shuts 60 minutes before the flight.

A week is a wide window for a low-cost airline, and it is worth using early for the reason set out below: the seat.

A seat is assigned automatically and free of charge at check-in. Choosing your own is a paid extra, and the airline publishes no amount for it — so no figure appears here.

Which means the free option has a cost of its own: whoever waits until the window opens takes what is left, and on a full flight the pairs of adjacent seats go first.

And a note for travelling companions. Because the free seat is allocated during check-in, two people who check in a week apart are allocated separately. Sitting together is decided by whoever opens the window first, not by the booking that holds you both.

Three routes lead to the same pass: the app, the website, or a sheet of paper from your printer.

Printing is offered explicitly, so the app is not compulsory — and the website alone is enough to check in, using the booking reference (PNR) and the surname.

That places Pegasus among the airlines that still let you travel without a smartphone, which is worth knowing when comparing it with carriers that have dropped paper entirely.

The practical advice is the dull one. A printout does not depend on battery or signal, and in a crowded terminal it is the safer of the two.

No airport check-in fee. The airline describes desk check-in as a normal procedure without attaching a price to it — and without declaring it free either. We therefore give no figure, and we do not promise you it costs nothing.

No late penalty. What the airline describes for a passenger who has not completed formalities in time is not a charge but the loss of every right attached to the flight. The sanction is the journey, not an amount.

No seat price. Paid seat selection exists, the amount does not appear on the pages we follow.

Why we spell this out. A page that quietly skips these three questions looks complete and is not — and on the day the airline publishes, these paragraphs become numbers.

For how other airlines flying out of the UK handle the same questions, see our online check-in guide and our Wizz Air check-in page.

One asymmetry worth naming. The airline does say that a seat is assigned free of charge, and it does describe what happens to a passenger out of time. What it never does is put a price on the desk itself — so the one thing a late passenger most wants to know is the one thing that is missing.

1. From 7 days before departure, open the booking with the reference and the surname.
2. Check your fare first — on Light, an international flight gives you the under-seat item only.
3. Choose the seat if it matters, since the free one is assigned for you at check-in.
4. Take the pass in the app, from the website, or on paper.
5. With a bag to check, be at the desk before the 60 minutes — 45 only applies inside Turkey.

The return flight has its own check-in, and if it departs from Turkey it may also have its own bag deadline.