Buy a bag for one airline and you may fail on another. That is the whole reason for this page: the nine carriers Pakistanis use most, with their cabin bag sizes and weights side by side, so you can see the overlaps — and the one or two strict numbers that should govern your purchase.
The bags differ by centimetres. The centimetres are the whole game.
The comparison table
| Airline | Cabin size | Weight (Economy) | Personal item | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PIA | 55 x 40 x 20 cm | 7 kg | Not separately published | Widely reported |
| SereneAir | 45 in total (L+W+H) | 7 kg | Laptop excluded from weight | Official |
| AirSial | 22 + 15 + 8 in (45 total) | 7 kg | One piece published | Official (ticket info) |
| Emirates | 55 x 38 x 22 cm | 7 kg (Premium Eco 10 kg) | 2 pieces in Business/First | Official |
| Qatar Airways | 50 x 37 x 25 cm | 7 kg | Small purse or briefcase | Official |
| Etihad (hand-baggage fare) | 56 x 36 x 23 cm | 7 kg + 5 kg personal | 23 x 39 x 19 cm, 5 kg | Official, that fare |
| Airblue | No readable official figure verified — check your e-ticket; pack to the Pakistani pattern | Unverified | ||
| Fly Jinnah | Set by fare bundle — check your bundle and e-ticket | Bundle-based | ||
| Turkish Airlines | Given by the airline's official baggage calculator for your route and fare | Calculator | ||
Figures verified October 30, 2026 from official sources for our baggage database, except PIA (widely reported; its official page was not readable) — full sourcing on each airline's own page, linked from our size and weight guide.
Reading the table like a buyer
The strictest height is Qatar's 50 cm. If Doha is in your life, that number chooses your bag. The strictest weight is everyone's 7 kg — the one point of total agreement — which is why empty bag weight matters more than any feature (see the 7 kg guide). The totals rule (SereneAir, AirSial) punishes the classic 55 x 40 x 20 bag by a centimetre on paper — soft bags settle it, hard shells argue with it. Etihad's hand-baggage fare is the generous outlier, trading a checked bag for a 7 kg + 5 kg cabin structure. And the three unquantified carriers teach the meta-lesson: where the airline will not state a number, your ticket and its calculator will — after you book, before you pack.
One bag for all your airlines: buy to the strictest row you actually fly.
The one-bag answer
If you want a single bag that satisfies every verifiable row above, its specification writes itself: height 50 cm or less, width 36–37 cm, depth 20 cm, empty weight under 1.5 kg, soft or semi-soft construction. You give up a little volume against the loosest limits and gain certainty everywhere. Travellers who fly only PIA and the domestic carriers can relax height to 55 cm; travellers who never leave Pakistan can relax further. Our shop labels every product with the limits it meets — the 30L backpack is the closest thing to the universal spec, and the feather-light duffel its soft-sided sibling.
A note on business and first class
This comparison is built on economy rules because economy is where the limits bite. Premium cabins loosen them in structured ways: Emirates and Qatar both move to two pieces (Qatar caps the pair at 15 kg combined; Emirates sets 7 kg per piece with defined briefcase and handbag shapes), and Emirates Premium Economy raises the single-piece weight to 10 kg. If you fly premium, your constraint is less the scale than the shapes — the two pieces are expected to be a briefcase-class bag and a handbag-class bag, not two trolleys. The airline pages linked from the table carry those details in full.
