Connecticut attorney Jim Aspell would rather pay a larger airfare than bother with add-on fees.
Aspell, whose son works at an airline, can fly for free on that carrier. But when he has luggage to check in, he prefers Southwest Airlines, which grants customers two checked bags minus the fees that have become nearly ubiquitous in the industry.
He flies about once a month and has noticed that over the past decade it takes longer to leave the plane, as passengers wrestle with oversized baggage they carried on board.
“People are bringing everything but the kitchen sink on board to try to avoid the bag fees,” he said. “It doesn’t do anybody any favours.”
Those fees have gone up again. Delta Air Lines last week raised the price of checking in a first bag from $30 to $35. Five US carriers have raised bag fees by $5 in the past two months, starting with Alaska Airlines and JetBlue Airways in January and February, then American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta in a two-week window. All now charge $35 to check a first bag online. All except Delta charge $40 or more to check that bag at the airport.
“They are like lemmings when it comes to this stuff,” said Bill McGee, a senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly think-tank.
American, Delta and JetBlue all cited rising industry costs as driving their decision. The airline industry is confronting inflation, higher fuel prices and higher labour costs.
“We remain unprofitable since Covid,” JetBlue said. “While we don’t like increasing fees, it’s one step we are taking to return our company back to profitability and cover the increased costs of transporting bags.”
Bag fees, introduced by airlines to counter surging fuel prices in 2008, have become a significant source of revenue for carriers. US airlines generated $6.8bn from them in 2022, the latest data available, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That is more than double from a decade earlier.
President Joe Biden mentioned travel fees in his State of the Union address, saying his administration had proposed making “cable, travel, utilities and online ticket sellers tell you the total price up front so there are no surprises”.
The Department of Transportation is supposed to unveil a rule this spring that would force airlines and ticket agents to disclose fees for bags, flight changes, cancellations and family seating on the first page of search results.
The language of the proposed rule suggests the department may place an outright ban on fees the airlines charge families to seat an adult next to a child, McGee said.
The airline industry is largely united in opposition to the rule. Trade group Airlines for America said that carriers “offer transparency and vast choice to consumers”, and that average domestic round-trip fares, including with ancillary fees added, were 14 per cent lower in 2023 than in 2010.
In a January 2023 letter to the transportation department, Airlines for America called the rule “arbitrary and capricious” and said that, if adopted, it “will clutter web pages and mobile screens, thereby forcing consumers to view and digest information they may not want”.
The group estimated the rule would cost airlines $33bn over 10 years.
“Airlines already provide thorough information in the channels they operate directly, and consumers already have ample opportunities to comparison shop — as they individually define the term ‘comparison’ — and otherwise understand the true cost of air travel,” the letter said.
United and American also wrote letters in January 2023 to oppose the rule, saying they already furnished consumers with information on fees. The rule, United said, “appears to be a solution in search of a problem”.
Budget carriers Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines, which advertise low base fares but rely more on ancillary revenue than legacy carriers, opposed the rule as well. But Southwest, which heavily markets its “Bags fly free” policy, endorsed it.
“The marketplace for purchasing air travel generally works well, so long as the consumer is made fully aware — in a timely and consistent manner — of the total cost of air travel when shopping for airfares, including which common amenities may be excluded from the base fare and must be purchased for an additional fee,” the Dallas-based airline said in a January 2023 letter.
Many passengers only fly once a year and thus may not understand how services once included in a traditional airfare now cost extra, or how to navigate an airline’s website to find more pricing information, according to a January 2023 letter from the consumer advocate group FlyersRights.org. It took between two and four clicks to find bag fee information on the websites of American, Delta and United, but more than 10 for Spirit and Frontier.
“Transparency in fees will help consumers have a better understanding of the true cost of flying,” the non-profit said.
