Aluminium Frame Cabin Trolley

Details

A cabin trolley built on a bolted aluminium frame rather than a moulded plastic shell. A shell case is one part, so a cracked corner ends the case. A frame case is an assembly, so a cracked corner is one bolt-off part. Two numbers in this category are routinely soft and both are printed straight here. The first is size. Cabin dimensions are habitually quoted for the shell body alone, leaving out the wheels and the retracted handle housing, which together add three to five centimetres to the height that a sizer actually measures. Ours is 55 x 35 x 22 cm with the wheels on and the handle down, because that is what the frame at the boarding gate measures. That fits the 55 x 35 x 25 cm allowance the Indian carriers use. It does not fit a 55 x 40 x 20 cm rule, which several European carriers apply, because 22 cm is 2 cm over on the depth axis. If you fly those, this is the wrong case and we would rather you knew now. The second is the shell. Polycarbonate is tough and expensive, ABS is neither, and a great many cases described as polycarbonate are ABS, or a PC and ABS blend, or ABS with a thin PC film on the face. A chip off a panel run through FTIR settles it in an afternoon and we do that per production lot.

• 6063 aluminium extrusion frame, bolted, not riveted shut
• 2.5 mm polycarbonate panels, identified by FTIR, not an ABS blend or a PC skin
• External 55 x 35 x 22 cm including wheels and the retracted handle
• Internal 50 x 33 x 20 cm, which is 33 L of packing space
• 3.4 kg empty against a 7 kg cabin allowance, so 3.6 kg left to pack
• 60 mm double spinner wheels on sealed bearings, one screw each, replaceable in two minutes
• Two-stage aluminium telescopic handle with a serviceable release cartridge
• Stainless machine screws throughout, a 3 mm hex key in the box
• Every wheel, corner, panel, handle and lock stocked as a part-numbered spare for ten years
• No riveted-shut shell, no bonded wheel housing, no glued corner
• It is heavier than a two-wheel soft case and it is heavier than a thin ABS spinner. That is what a frame and a 2.5 mm panel weigh, and it is the reason the case survives the belt.