Joshua Smith’s fiancee spends an extra day in Athens after her airline forces her to recheck her luggage. Whose fault is this snafu? Her online agent’s? The airline’s? Or hers? And what, if anything, can be done about it?
Posts tagged as:
BAGGAGE
I never meant to openly challenge American Airlines’ indefensible policy of charging those who can least afford it – budget-conscious leisure travelers – for the first checked bag. I had no intention of making a scene when I boarded a flight to Dallas with my family this morning.
Just as Delta Air Lines announced plans to raise its checked baggage fees, another carrier appears to be quietly considering charging its customers for the first piece of checked luggage.
One of the most compelling arguments against excessive luggage fees is that they were actually hurting the airlines’ bottom line — that by adding these extras, travelers were turning to carriers like Southwest and JetBlue, which don’t charge for the first checked bag. But it turns out that’s not true.
Sidestepping this year-old airline rule was pretty easy up to this point. Flight attendants and gate agents routinely waved passengers with too much luggage through, hoping to avoid a confrontation. But now that baggage fees are generating serious money — they accounted for $1.5 billion in 2008, according to the Transportation Department — airlines are less likely to let the surplus bags slide.
And it’s the wrong answer. In a recent column about luggage, I suggested that a simple rulemaking by the Transportation Department could compel airlines to include one piece of checked luggage as part of the base fare. I recommended that readers write the DOT to let it know they supported such action.
This is what Tom Frazier’s bag looked like when Frontier Airlines returned it to him after a recent flight from Minneapolis to Albuquerque. Frontier refused to compensate him for the damage, and there was no way to appeal its decision.
When Pina Belfiore-Benvenuto’s bags were lost on a recent flight from New York to Paris, the missing contents included a digital camera and a watch — two items that her airline’s contract of carriage exclude from liability. And to absolutely no one’s surprise, her carrier told her she was out of luck. Maybe it shouldn’t have.
It’s been almost a year since American Airlines started charging passengers for their first checked bag, a move that every other legacy airline quickly followed. It’s taken almost that long for the luggage industry to catch up to that new reality.
Sign up for my 
