Stuck with the Check

For some time now I’ve been picking on various airlines for the unvarnished lunacy involved in baggage fees and similar made-up charges – saying how they might as well just bend over and give the discount airlines (like Southwest) that don’t charge this sort of nuisance fee an axe. I’ve also raised the point that baggage fees result in more people taking increasing amounts of carry-on luggage with them, which crowds an already cramped cabin and clogs up security checkpoints, making an already unpleasant flying experience that much worse and convincing even more people to use alternate forms of transportation. I’ve also expressed my doubts about whether the airlines can actually make more profits this way, and if they can, how much of it is coming on the backs of the taxpayers. Now it turns out that the Homeland Security Secretary was considering the same question…

An Associated Press story appearing on the Yahoo News site details Janet Napolitano’s testimony before Congress, where the Secretary claimed that the increase in carry-on baggage due to the new fee structures is costing taxpayers around $260 million each year. It’s not a big piece of the $5 billion or so that the industry is expected to make this year, but I rather resent the idea of 5% of a given industry’s profit margin being taken directly out of my money, especially when that industry has received government bail-out money over the past decade or so. It turns out that the Department of Homeland Security and some of the Congresspeople they report to are not happy about it either; the real question is what to do about it…

Demanding contributions from the airlines – the obvious idea – is essentially pointless, since they will just add whatever the amount is to existing ticket prices and continue on with business as usual. Imposing a $5 airport security fee on all passengers – which DHS has been trying to get approve since 2002, without success – is just more of the same; not even an attempt to charge the airlines for cleaning up the mess they’ve created. As we’ve seen with the automotive and financial industry bailouts, even government loan debts are not enough to get private companies to stop paying outrageous bonuses to worthless personnel OR start charging more reasonable fees, and there’s no reason to expect that things would be any different in the airline industry. In fact, there’s nothing short of nationalizing an industry that will allow our Federal government to control how a company does business – and that hasn’t worked so well in countries that have tried it…

Now, in many respects, the increased demands on TSA screeners and their crackpot equipment actually has been good for our economy. The airport security programs have provided jobs for thousands of Americans who apparently couldn’t qualify for responsible jobs like garbage collector or sewer maintenance technician, and has provided sales for a number of companies that make equipment you apparently couldn’t use on animals without have the ASPCA camp out in front of your office. And, as the linked article makes clear, the airlines themselves are on a pace to have their first profitable year since 2002. But speaking as an American taxpayer, I’m still a little annoyed at being asked to pick up the check for all of these benefits while an industry that appears to have dug its own pit and then willingly jumped into it gets to make a multi-billion-dollar profit…