Always EASILY fits under the seat on planes along with my purse, and holds a change of clothes, sweater, iPad & cords/chargers, a cosmetics bag, toiletry bag, and more, and has side pockets for a water bottle, etc. I hate dealing with the overhead bins because I’m short and also I don’t want to worry about fighting for space. Gave up on rolling “under-seater” bags for flights because these days one never knows if they’ll actually fit under the seat. A regular tote gets too cumbersome, especially if there’s a lot of trudging through airports and plane changing. For me, a backpack became the way to go. This one is a little smaller than average, making it ideal for my petite stature, and I like that it works as a tote as well. LOVE that it stands on its own - great feature when retrieving items. Baggallini bags are pretty durable, so for me it was worth the money to get the perfect not-too-big but bigger-than-child-size backpack/tote hybrid.