Would You Believe…?

I was leaving my favorite coffee house yesterday when a paper on the coin-op rack outside caught my eye; it was a USA Today issue, and the headline said “Airline bag fees as high as $450.” I thought it must be a misprint, or at the very least, that I was reading it wrong. So when I got home I looked the story up on the USA Today Website. Turns out they weren’t kidding; the era of the $400-plus airline fee is upon us. According to the website, Continental, American and United are all charging $400 or more for an overweight bag (anything from 71 to 100 pounds) on their international flights, with American taking the record at $450 per overweight bag. Now, as absurd as this might seem, it is still just for overweight bags on very long flights; the regular fees can’t be this outrageous, can they?

Well, if you continue reading, it turns out that they can. Spirit Airlines, who have been leading the way in airline fees for some years now, is charging $38 per bag for domestic and $43 per bag for international flights – and that’s for your first bag. Spirit also charges $30 for carry-on bags, if you pay for them in advance online, or $40 if you wait until you get to the airport. But they’re hardly the only ones pushing the envelope in this area; Delta is charging $250 to change an international ticket, and even some of the discount carriers will charge a quarter to a half of that for the same “service.” Probably the most outrageous of all, at least from where I’m sitting, are the charges to book a “free” ticket using frequent flyer miles; US Air charges up to $90 for these if you make your reservations by phone, and up to $50 if you make them online. Rather a lot for a “free” service, I can’t help thinking…

Now, we’ve all heard the arguments in favor of airline fees, and I regret to say that some of them even make sense. It’s true that if you don’t need certain of these services, you can save a lot of money by not using them – and it’s also true that if you don’t need a specific service, it doesn’t make sense that you’re being automatically charged for it. Unfortunately, that’s not how these programs are turning out. On most airlines people are bringing ever-increasing amounts of carry-on bags in order to avoid paying the fees for checked baggage, which is making boarding slower and more difficult and contributing to increased crowding in what are already overcrowded overhead bins and seating rows. There’s also some indication that the increases in fees are making it harder for people to fly, and are therefore cutting down on the number of passengers, which is just making the industry’s revenue problems worse…

At the heart of the matter, though, is the fact than many of the airlines have started using fees as revenue generation methods, in order to cover the increasing cost of jet fuel, landing fees, and other expenses. In theory, these fees would appear to be more palatable to customers than just raising fares – and indeed, most flyers are still choosing their flights based on price, not on which airlines offer the lowest fees. What keeps getting overlooked in this discussion is that Southwest Airlines, the only major carrier that does not charge baggage fees, is also the only major airline that has been consistently profitable in recent years. I can’t say for sure that this is cause and effect without examining the books of the companies involved – but the conclusion about constant fee increases looks straightforward enough to me…