About Pack & Passport

Pack & Passport is a travel gear site for people with a trip booked and a gap in the bag. Not for collectors, not for spec-sheet readers - for somebody who is flying in three weeks and needs to know which carry-on fits, what goes in it, and what security will let through.

Who runs it

Michael W. is the hands-on owner behind The First Buyer, and he runs this site. Every article, review and guide here carries his byline, because a site with no name attached is a site nobody is accountable for.

That is the whole biography, and it is deliberately short. We could pad it with a flight count, a country tally or a decade of experience, and none of it would be checkable. A short honest bio is worth more than a long unverifiable one.

The editorial position

We pick gear by trip type and airline rules, not by spec sheet. That sounds small and it changes everything: the right carry-on for somebody flying Southwest is different from the right one for somebody flying a European budget carrier that weighs cabin bags, and no amount of shell-material comparison gets you to that answer.

So we publish the rules alongside the products. Carry-on size by airline, personal item size by airline and the TSA liquid rules are the pages this site is actually built around, and every recommendation is checked against them. When we researched this niche we found that none of the major gear sites publish those limits, and the publishers who do publish them recommend no products at all. Both halves are needed at once.

The second thing we do is tell you what each pick is bad at. Every product on this site carries a named flaw - it is a required field in how these pages are built, so a recommendation physically cannot ship without one. A review that only lists strengths is an advertisement.

What we do and do not do

We are not a testing lab. We do not receive free samples, and we do not accept payment for placement. Our picks come from the specs that decide a purchase, from published hands-on testing by named reviewers, and from our own travel where it genuinely applies - and we tell you which is which on every page.

Four sites already own "tested and reviewed" in this category and they have the labs to back it. We are not going to out-claim them with language we cannot substantiate. What we can do better is be specific about airline rules, honest about drawbacks, and current - and those are the things we compete on. Our methodology sets out exactly what "field-tested" means here, including the parts we do not do.

What you will not find here

• Star ratings or review scores presented as measurements. We do not run a lab, so a number dressed up as a test result would be fiction.
• Customer testimonials. We have none, so we publish none.
• Prices. We have no live price feed for this site, and a stale number is worse than no number. Every buy link takes you to the current price on Amazon instead.
• Urgency or scarcity framing. No countdown timers, no "prices won't last".
• Claims about testing we did not do. If a finding comes from somebody else's hands-on testing, we name them.

How the site makes money

Pack & Passport is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. When you buy through a link here we earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. Commission never changes what we pick or how we rank it - where a cheaper option is the better buy, that is the one at the top, regardless of what it pays.

The full version, including the specific programs and what we do with the money, is on the affiliate disclosure page.

Corrections

Airline rules change, and a stale rule is worse than no rule - somebody plans a trip around a limit that moved eighteen months ago. Every guide carries a visible last-updated date and links the carrier's own baggage page so you can check the figure yourself.

If you find something here that does not match what an airline publishes today, tell us and we will fix it. That is the feedback we act on fastest. The address is contact@packandpassport.com, or use the contact page.