How much more outrageous can those outragous airline fees get?

I strongly suspect that carry on luggage fees (or, at the minimum weight allowances) are next.

I’ll note in passing that there is room here for airlines to differentiate themselves in the marketplace by becoming “fee free.”

And when it gets more extreme: rent-a-closets. Keep a wardrobe in your most frequented cities. Or rental clothing.

I don’t think we’ll see pay toilets, but I do suspect we may see weigh-ins. This will be in the form of something like tickets that give you 250lbs of carriage–passenger and baggage–and you have to pay in 50 lb increments beyond that. Or buy a second seat for your baggage.

In the end, I think the outrage is that this is structured as a fee. If Delta *refunded* $50 to those who checked only a single bag, I don’t think you would be hearing the same complaints.

How about a “pilot access fee?” That’s the fee we pay to actually have a pilot enter the aircraft and fly us where we’re supposed to go.

The “overhead access fee,” which is what we pay to actually put our carry-on luggage in the overhead bins. Or those will become coin operated.

A “seatbelt maintenance fee,” so we can be guaranteed our seatbelts won’t split in flight.

The “Armrest priority fee.” Whoever pays this fee first gets to determine whether the middle armrest stays up or down.

“Oxygen mask maintenance fee.” Self-explanatory.

Regulatory Access Fee: Pay the lawyers to file hte paper work

Tissue Access Fee: You want toilet paper too? Males 25 cents, females $1.00 – you KNOW you use more, you should pay more.

Flight Attendant Smile Training Fee: you SAID you wanted smiles.

Luggage System Maintenance Fee: The bag are supposed to go with the passengers? Hmmm. New fee. [See AA JFK airport, 7/30-31/08].

Luggage Handler Massage Fee: Them bags are heavy and we have to have them on staff to provide massage and chiropractic service.

Health insurance surchage: goes up every year, and you would not want us not to provide our people health insurance would you?

Liability Coverage Fee: covers liability coverage

Seat Back Access Fee: You want to place you items in the seat back, like ipods and phones and stuff? You should pay for that as well.

Engine Maintenance Load: We hate it when the engines fail over the ocean, you should too.

Compressed AirPack Fee: We understand you would like to remain conscious during your flight, thus we must expend fuel to run the air packs which heat cool and compress the air so it is breathable at FL360.

Air Crew Training Fee: You think these pilots know all this stuff on their OWN? The FAA requires recurrent training every 12 months and that costs us lots of money. You want a trained and current flight crew, right?

Life Vest Maintenance Fee: You have an overseas flight, if you do not believe you can remain afloat for 36-48 hours on your own then you want a working life vest. That costs money too.

Old Fart Annoying Fee: We make money flying airplanes, not answering stupid questions from old people who just get in the way and slow everyone and who think that they need some special service.

Wheelchair Fee: The ADA states we need to provide passage to the disabled – if they need wheelchairs it just slows everybody down and requires that we use a person to escort them on to the airplane. They CAN crawl you know.

Keep the list going -0

Which also leads naturally to the “Brake maintenance fee,” which ensures the plane will actually STOP once it touches down, and won’t hit the fence at the end of the clear zone. However, if the brakes do fail, it will be put down to human ignorance, which is clearly an Act of God, so the “promise we won’t crash” fee won’t be refunded in that case, either.

“Windowshade fee.” You want to raise the windowshades and look outside? Five cents, please.

PITA fee: The fee levied against pax who pi$$ off a flight attendant. Stands for “Pain in the A$$” fee.

And if ladies have to pay more for toilet paper, then clearly, the men will have to pay the “sprinkled seat” fee. Or the “left the seat up” fee.

“Safety lecture fee.” That’s so the FAs will continue to perform the interpretive theater pieces we all find so entertaining as the plane pushes back from the gate… Which leads to

“Pushback fee.” You actually want the plane on the taxiway, don’t you? Well, someone has to pay the guys who drive the little tractor giving you a helping hand.

There wouldn’t be so much nickel and diming if the public wanted quality and not cheap. If you want cheap fares, deal with the nickel and diming in today’s high fuel price world. Inflation has increased 200% since the early 1970s when airfares have only risen 30%.

Don’t blame the airlines…blame the oil companies and the speculators for this. Why should the airlines give you a fare that doesn’t even cover their expenses? Have you seen the price at the pump for your car? Imagine the impact on an airline? The fares have been ridiculously low in the last 2 years and with fuel prices and joe-public looking for the absolutely cheapest fare, the airlines have gone into a cut-throat strategy lowering fares below a survivable level. Now we have an industry in shambles. The airlines are charging for this and that so you have the choice of a cheap flight if you don’t check a bag, etc. Its the only way they can offer you a cheaper fare. It’s your choice.

Remember the saying “You get what you pay for.”

You guys are frightening me. When all of these fees start showing up, I’ll know who to blame, right?
That being said, I did have one or two to throw out:

Seat recovery fee: Hey, those seats aren’t free. Everyone pays their share to replace the seat. Kids pay double.

Tray and lean charge: If you don’t want to sit at a 90 degree angle for the entire flight while you hold your drink on your lap, you better pack a bunch of change.

To change it up, here’s one that I would pay for. Personal space enforcer: Pay $20 to a big guy who guards your personal space for you, keeping the kids behind you from kicking you seat the entire flight, the guy in front of you from putting his head in your lap for hours with his full recline, and the nice lady next to you from sharing half of you seat with her bulk. I’d pay that with a smile. :-)

On a side note, how the heck do you shower for 5 minutes? I guess you can forget washing your hair. I don’t even know guys that routinely shower in 5 minutes. Please remember that this is going to be poor water pressure, which just makes it a slower shower….

Jake, I actually agree totally with you. I hate the nickel and diming that we are seeing but at the end of the day, our airline marketing/sales people think that people just want cheap fares so they offer the option of cheap and if you want to take another bag, you can pay for it but if you want cheap, you don’t have to subsidize the other guy that did take a checked bag.

SWA is the real spoiler here with their low fares and hats off to them for hedging when and how much they did. However, they are trying to hurt everyone else by keeping the fares ridiculously low. The other airlines think they have to meet those fares thus causing the issues you mentioned. The sales/marketing folks at the airlines are so institutionalized into their ticket fare strategies of old (matching the lowest fare) that they can’t change with the times and the current situation. I am furious at nickel and diming and it could go away with higher fares but that isn’t what the airlines think everyone wants unfortunately. SWA will have their day too and they should be reaping the profits where they can right now since their hedging will run out and they have the most expensive labor force in the industry.

My point is that we are living with the mentality that people want cheap and we are seeing customers that really should be on a bus and not an airplane. I hear ya. RAISE THE D*MN FARES and get the industry healthy again. I’m hoping with the reduction in capacity that we see the fares rise.

We are flying with full airplanes these days with full capacity so why are the fares so low????? The nickel and diming is supposedly a short-term fix until the airlines reduce capacity but it’s stupid and just ticking off the folks we really want flying. Raise the fares to cover the costs of doing business.

I can tell you that as an airline employee, I’m sick of personally subsidizing the low fares with taking more paycuts and concessions. You guys don’t want to be nickeled and dimed so RAISE THE FARES and everyone wins. If there is a frost in Florida, doesn’t the cost of orange juice go up? If you want orange juice, you buy it at that price. If you don’t want to buy it at that price, you don’t have to. I’m just as unhappy with all of this as you are.

The airlines as a whole have become too large. While I feel bad that the employees are getting “hosed” by the concessions that they are forced to make so that they can keep their jobs, it hasn’t slowed the perks or salaries for the upper eschelon corporate execs. Traditionally, “the little” people are the ones forced to make changes and sacrifices, this is true in every type of business. I think that it’s crap, unfortunately that is how the system runs; ” the company is running out of money, but the CEO needs that pied-a-terre so he can do his job” I am also willing to pay for service BUT the airlines no longer offer it and when it is offered it has a $10 surcharge. Seating is poor quality, you can sit on the tarmac for hours without compensation or a potty, I have to spend as much time in the ariport to get checked in as my flight will take(it is NOT all about TSA), MAYBE my bag will land at the same airport that I do. Airlines can do anything they want, but at this point in time they need to re-think they’re business model. As things get tighter for Americans it will become worse for the legacy airlines. If they go under it is only the natural progression of the many poor choices by CEO’s and greedy stock holders, just ask Ford and GM, I bet they wish they hadn’t cancelled their alternative fuel research years ago because it was too costly, because it may now cost them their companies. The current financial state of the country is causing us to re-prioritize our needs maybe aircarriers need to do that too. If you alienate the “little people” who do the work and get rid of them due to costs, then you alienate your customers by treating them poorly and then surcharging them to death, they too will go away and then tell me, what is left?

Janet,

I have to disagree with your statement about SWA:

‘SWA is the real spoiler here…’

If our complaint is that airlines are charging less than cost for tickets, then how can we complain that Southwest is actually charging more than cost. Your complaint would indicate that you want Southwest to gouge us right now so that the other airlines can make money. But why shouldn’t Southwest be able to charge less if their costs are less?

It has been said that business profits are made at the purchasing level. If you get your supplies for less, you can provide your product for less. Just like the car makers are now regretting the fact that they didn’t invest in bio-fuels.. the other airlines are now regretting that they didn’t jump on the fuel hedge train.

The fact is that Southwest made some good business decisions a few years ago. And rather than take advantage of the situation facing the traveling public, they are keeping the cost of their tickets reasonable.

Yes, Southwest’s fuel hedges will expire in the not too distant future. At that point Southwest will have to look at what will work for their business model. But one thing Southwest has always been good at is adapting to the needs of the marketplace.

All,

Here’s a covert “fee” that’s already in place at US Air but largely invisible to the unaware. Beyond the $150/ticket penalty for changing my flight plans (which is outrageous), I had to pay the difference in the fare (which is common practice).

To make the change, however, I was unable to use their website to get the lowest available fare published there. Instead, I was forced to call US Air “customer service” who, after a protracted delay while they consulted with one another, came back to the phone and quoted a fare that was ANOTHER $150 higher than the fare than I was looking at on their website!!! That’s a $300/ticket increase – more than double what I originally paid.

When I confronted my not so competent US Air agent with my “confusion” about this discrepancy between published and quoted fares, she said that the web fare was old, I mean probably had changed (in the past 15 minutes!!!), I mean was not available to customers who are changing their plans, etc., etc.

I flew SWA, used a Rapid Rewards ticket, and saved over $900 for the 3 tickets. No more US Air for me – suggest you do the same.

By the way, out of Philly, you can book through United on many of the very same planes used by US Air, save some $s, and hopefully avoid some of these egregious shake down practices.

A few points about Southwest and their hedging, costs, and so forth:

It’s true that fuel hedging accounts for a huge amount of Southwest’s profitability at this point. If they were paying market rates for jet fuel, like many airlines, they would probably still be profitable, but not nearly as much.

Contrast that, however, with the legacy carriers who are losing tens or hundreds of millions in a single quarter. Given that, as was pointed out, Southwest has one of the highest-paid workforces in the airline industry, it’s clear they work to reduce costs in other areas as well. Efficiency in scheduling, sensible pricing that is easy to understand, single type of plane that every mechanic can work on – whatever it takes – Southwest understands that it takes a lot of work to stay profitable.

Southwest continues to hedge fuel, by the way; it just doesn’t do it all at once as far out as it can. Hedging is a complex business I don’t pretend to understand completely, but if even 25% of their fuel can be bought at what amounts to a 25% discount from “at the pump” pricing, that’s still a huge savings.

As for Patrick, the pilot: The problem with airfares is simple. The legacy airlines dug their grave years ago, by charging excessive fees and simultaneously allowing costs to get out of control. Airlines have been collapsing, financially, for decades, long before fuel prices became the latest bogeyman. Along came airlines who figured out that they could do things more efficiently, at lower costs,and surprise – people were happy to make the switch.

With regard to your 6,000 gallons of fuel – I presume that, in fact, you don’t burn every gallon of fuel on that flight. I believe that FAA requirements call for a substantial fuel reserve at all times so that you can make it to an alternate airport, if necessary, or that you can circle for an extended period. A considerable portion of that “full tank”, in fact, won’t be burned until the next flight. So your allocation of costs is faulty.

Unbundling costs is fine – except that the profitable airlines – I mean airline – doesn’t do that. I can’t imagine that at bulk purchase rates of about 20 cents per can, soda prices are bankrupting the airlines.

I must say I don’t feel a bit bad for the legacies. With their incredibly bloated executive bonuses in comparison to the rank and file, whether the company can afford it or not, shows their extreme disregard for their passengers, company, and employees.
Karma.