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5 airline fees that make absolutely no sense whatsoever

May 19, 2008

Paying extra for a better seat, a meal, or to offset higher fuel costs — we get that. But other airline fees make absolutely no sense.

Adam Bursell encountered a logic-defying surcharge when he booked a flight on American Airlines recently. A few weeks after making his reservation, he found the fare had fallen $75. He asked the airline for credit. “They told me they would gladly refund the difference, as long as I paid a ticket change fee of $100,” he says. “This obviously makes no sense.”

Obviously not.

And that made me wonder: What other fees out there make no sense? Here are the top five:

1. The change fee. The ticket change fee, recently raised to an eye-popping $150 by some airlines, may serve a carrier’s bottom line, but it’s a pure money grab and has nothing to do with the actual cost of changing a ticket. In fact, the price of changing an electronic ticket, when you factor in labor costs, is somewhere around $10. The rest is profit.

2. The call center fee. If you phone your airline to make a reservation, you’ll pay a surcharge (usually $15). Airlines argue the fee is necessary because there’s an extra cost associated with having a person make the reservation. Perhaps. But the airline must still operate a call center, even if all of its reservations happen online. Why not charge customers who call with questions, too?

3. The curbside luggage fee. Do you mean to tell me that it costs the airline $2 per bag extra to move your luggage a few feet across the concourse? Not buyin’ it. Neither is the judge.

4. Award ticket booking fees. Sadly, this has been going on for a while now. Weren’t award tickets supposed to be free? So why are we paying for them?

5. Seat assignment fees. You’ve just paid for your seat on a plane. Now it’s time to pay for your seat assignment. But wait, isn’t that what you just paid for?

Confused? Me too.

Airlines may never give up their fees — there’s too much money there — but couldn’t they at least get rid of the ones that don’t make sense?

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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16 comments

  • Joe Farrell

    So don’t fly commerical. Vote with your feet. Then they’ll just keep raising fees until have no one to raise them to.

    I disagree with the premise that you should pay what it costs for the service plus a small profit; if that were the case you would never pay less than $500 each way for a ticket between NY and LA. The only way you can get a $150 each way fare between the coasts is if the airline overcharges someone else. The math is pretty clear that it costs an airline about $300 PER SEAT for a 757 or 767-200 between the coasts just to break even.

    I personally bristled at paying a booking fee to make an upgrade reservation on AA that could only be made via telephone. The Gold customer service desk waived the fee when I made the reservation when I asked, and then the ‘ticketing desk’ charged me when they actually issued the ticket because I needed a new ticket for a leg on JAL. I called back and actually had to argue with someone who admitted they waived the fee but the need to reissue it [from their mistake, not mine] caused the fee to attach. I never got a clear explanation of that reasoning but the Gold desk simply credited me.

  • Jasper

    @ Joe F: The problem is that nobody wants to be the overcharged person anymore. I wish we could go to a more simply time where airline fees were relatively simple to understand and would seem fair.

    I’d much rather pay a flat $500 than $300 price + $75 airport tax + $25 booking fee + $15 seat assignment fee + $35 luggage fee + $25 fuel surcharge + $15 snack charge. If you’ve done the math you’d see that the latter is $10 less, but really, isn’t the travel industry in the business of selling convenience?

    BTW: What is sensible about a fuel surcharge? Isn’t fuel just one of the base ingredients of ticket prices? So when fuel goes up, so should ticket prices.

  • Joe Farrell

    @Jasper – amen on the being the overcharged passenger.

    Last week I went to DC from Connecticut. The airlines wanted between $700 and $900 a ticket from BDL-IAD. Southwest wanted only a $209 walk up but all the flights were sold out. I flew myself naturally, but there is something wrong when a flight from Hartford to Washington costs $1600 roundtrip.

    There is definitely something wrong when I can fly my personal airplane, [only rich people own airplanes right? - Wrong.] and have the trip not only cost less [$600 total for all expenses, fixed and variable for 4 hours of time vs. $1600 on the airlines] plus take less time. I left my hotel at 8.15am and was sitting at my desk in my office at Noon. If I left my hotel at 8.15am for an airline flight it would have been 30 min to the airport, 60-90 min early for the flight, 75 min for the flight and 30 to drive to the office, all told about 3 hours, or a minimum of 15 min. more than what it took me to fly myself. Plus, it was raining when I left, meaning air traffic delays in the northeast, but, because I was not going someplace an airline flies, I had no delay.

    Airline travel has gotten insane. Sooner or later it will adapt. Everything does.

  • Jasper

    @ Joe: We agree. There is something wrong when you can fly your private plane cheaper than airlines can fly their. I think the difference is that you don’t give yourself millions in bonuses for running your own private airline.

    And we agree as well that air travel (I actually would add most of the rest of the travel industry as well) has gone insane.

    [digress] I can’t happen to stop myself making a comparison to general insanity in society here. I mean, there’s one candidate that just ignores the rules and keeps claiming she’s in the lead, by picking her own rules – rules that have changed compared to what she agreed to a couple of month ago. As long as such people can be really successful (and whether she wins or looses, she is seen as successful), the world is *not* gonna be a better place, because other people will take notice and copy that behavior. South Park had a good episode a couple weeks ago where Cartman explained a latino class, that it’s not cheating when you call it a ‘misinterpretation of the rules’, just like white people (Belicheck) do. The class took note, and passed their exams with flying colors. [\digress]

  • Ana Elisa Leiderman

    “Why not charge customers who call with questions, too?”

    Don’t give them any ideas! In Europe, most calls to customer service for ANY reason are toll calls, even if it is their problem. Forget about getting any credit for hours on the phone trying to resolve something that is not your fault.

  • Jasper

    @ Ana: True. But the governments are starting to slowly push back, especially against ridiculous hold-times. In the Netherlands, the government is starting to think of outlawing charging told when people are on hold (a wonderful rip-off), or capping the maximum amount of minutes that people can be charged.

    In the US, the government would just see toll lines as an excellent new source of tax revenue, and start discouraging 800 lines. Or am I too cynical now?

  • Mike

    To be honest I’m a little disappointed with this blog entry as it is a bit misleading. Usually you do a very nice job of being objective and telling both sides of a story but this particular issue seems to have clouded your objectivity. While I’m certainly not suggesting that these fees are valid, it seems to me that your arguments are based on a false assumption. As with most goods and services, the prices imposed by airlines for these services are determined by the market (how much people are willing to pay for them) not on the labor costs.
    In the case of the change fee there are costs (or savings, depending on how you look at it) involved in having increased predictability in scheduling. You are paying for the benefit of changing your ticket on short notice, not for the labor costs of physically changing it.
    For the call center fee your paying a surcharge to have personal service provided to a transaction that you could just as easily perform yourself. If it was free everyone would just call for reservations all the time, resulting in significant additional costs. The comparison to questions is an “apples to oranges” comparison.
    For the curbside fee you are paying for the privilege of not waiting inside at the counter check-in line. It’s a matter of how valuable this service is to you, not how much it costs to move the luggage 10 feet.
    The seat assignment fee is another example there being enough demand for these premium seats such that people are willing to pay extra

    I think these charges are gratuitous on the part of the airlines (except maybe the curbside fee, which is usually well worth it to skip the line) just like you do, but I think the flying public would be better served if we made more valid arguments against them, rather than the false logic you’ve used here

  • Poley

    I agree we are overcharged for fees and some fees just dont make sense. But there are a few fees that do.

    The call center fee – This is one of those fees that make sense but is not administered as fairly as it should be. It costs more to make a reservation over the phone. If more people made reservations online. the call center could spend more time helping people with problems. With that extra time maybe we wont have to wait as long on hold to get through to someone. What doesn’t make sense is why the fee is charged for instances where the reservations cant be made online.

    The curbside luggage fee – You are paying a fee for the convenience of not having to lug your bags all the way through the airport to stand in a even longer long line at the ticket counter. What’s the point of printing boarding passses online when you have to spend the same amount of time in line as when you check in at the counter

    Seat assignment fees – What you paid for is the ability to sit in a seat instead of in the lavatory. Some people dont want a seating free for all like southwest or want to sit in a preferrd seat without elite status. If i could get preferred seating by paying a fee i could seriously think about not being part of a frequent flier program anymore

  • Marilyn Daggett

    I was stunned when American Airlines announced last week that it was planning to begin charging $15 for the FIRST checked bag, as well as the now customary $25 for the second bag.
    I am not a frequent flier by any means, and only use air carriers 3 or 4 times per year when I visit my sons and their families. However, on my limited retirement income I won’t be able to continue to fly anywhere if these fees and other charges are not capped. I wish the government would step in and stop the excessive costs in the airline industry. If I have to pay $500 to fly from coast to coast – so be it. But to tack on fee, after fee, after fee is ridiculous. I am seriously thinking of taking Amtrak when I have to visit my grandbabies, even though it will take almost a week to get from Phoenix to Atlanta or Philly.

  • William Hope

    Try this one: making trip next fall to Spain. Business class seats in most domestic legs aren’t enough better to justify extra fares, so I wanted to book domestic leg in coach, transatlantic in business. There is no way to do a 2-class booking online as a single itinerary. (Wanted single itin & confirm # to reduce chance of lost data, stranding en route) If I want a single booking, the $25 fee to go thru phone ctr agent still applies, even when there is no means of doing it online. Requests to speak to a supervisor met with assurances that “she will just say same thing” “she can’t waive the charge, etc. Went ahead and booked as 2 separate itineraries on same airline. I am purposely not naming airline because the problem is same on others. They are all trying to be apoint-to-point line like So’west or Ryanair, while masquerading as “full service (hah!) carriers

  • jaxon

    Wm Hope,
    It’s not just Europe, I just booked a domestic US flight on one of the major on line booking sites because the flight it showed could not be found on the airline site . I called the airline — how do I find this flight? — oh, can only book it through us, as it won’t come up on our website and that will be $15! — even though it was NOT bookable through their website. That was US AIrways.

    Southern Skyways, a new airline in Chicago/Rockford, which just canceled their first two weeks of flying with a bogus excuse, charges to book on their website, $20. The only way you can save the booking fee, is to go to the airport and use a human! Oh, go figure!

    I basically hate the airlines, now, all of them. Without fail since shortly after 9/11, 50% of all travel I take is messed up in some way. They have become a necessary evil, like insurance companies.

  • Ana Elisa Leiderman

    @ Jasper:

    “In the US, the government would just see toll lines as an excellent new source of tax revenue, and start discouraging 800 lines. Or am I too cynical now?”

    The government already has toll lines. Try getting an appointment for a travel visa in Colombia, Mexico, or any other busy embassy or consulate. You have to first pay for a long distance call only to purchase a code that will give you 5 minutes phone time with the embassy. Then pay for the appointment AND pay for the visa application. None of it is refundable if you don’t get it.

    The US government is making money hand over fist. I wonder where it all goes?

  • RTS

    RE: 1. The change fee. The ticket change fee, recently raised to an eye-popping $150 by some airlines, may serve a carrier’s bottom line, but it’s a pure money grab and has nothing to do with the actual cost of changing a ticket. In fact, the price of changing an electronic ticket, when you factor in labor costs, is somewhere around $10. The rest is profit.

    The change fee is likely due to abuse by customers who book one flight, then decide (for whatever reason) to not fly that flight and take another. Flight loads and availability are adversely affected by people who decide to do so on a whim. Factor in rewards travelers who do this regularly. Don’t believe me? Look on a Friday flight schedule out of a major airline hub. You will see so many people skip to earlier flights it’ll make your head spin. It creates overloads at gates, oversales can happen because of faulty booking data, and so on…it spirals out of control because of poor planning. There is a LOT more going on than just the physical labor of changing the ticket.

    I agree a lot of fees are unfair, but this one should be left alone.

  • Alison Wonderland

    Yes, there has been a recent increase in existing airline fees as well as the introduction of new ones, but there are two sides to the coin. The cost of opperating an airline is increasing on a daily basis. Carriers can compensate by raising ticket prices across the board, which I strongly doubt you would applaud, or they can charge more for optional fees. No traveler is forced to pay for checking luggage. Everyone has the option to pack lighter and/or smarter (I managed to travel across Europe for 2 weeks with only a carry-on full of compression bags) as opposed to paying for the extra weight in the cargo hold.

    Passengers also have the option to change their plans for a fee or stick with what they originally booked. It is their choice. Granted, life happens and plans change, but most airlines do offer some kind of travel insurance that will allow you to pay a small fee up front for the privlegde of making changes with little to no penalty.

  • http://www.CompareAirlineFees.com Charles Goodwin

    Great information!
    http://www.CompareAirlineFees.com is a great site to compare 25 different extra airline fees and flight prices from top sites at the same time.

  • Carol

    Huh paying extra for good seat and meal!!! ham for that we should feel worhy!!!
    ___________________
    Carol
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