Like just about every other airline passenger this summer, Elizabeth Rodgers wants to avoid any unnecessary fees. So on a recent flight from Los Angeles to Boise, Idaho, she tried to carry all of her luggage on the plane.
She didn’t get far.
As Rodgers boarded the cramped regional jet, passengers were being asked to gate-check most of their carry-ons. A flight attendant tagged her extra bag without charging her $15. “I checked it for free,” says Rodgers, a technology writer based in Los Angeles.
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.
For example:
· US Airways last month began charging $5 on top of its $15 fee for a first checked bag if you don’t pay for it in advance.
· Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines started charging $50 for the second checked bag on flights to Europe.
· Alaska Airlines added a checked-bag fee, too: $15 for the first bag, $25 for the second.
Airlines are spinning the changes in a clever way. My favorite explanation comes from US Airways, which rationalized its new fee as a way to offer customers “the convenience of prepaying to check their bags online.”
It’s clear that airlines are depending on ancillary revenues in general, and luggage fees in particular, more than ever. Meaning air travelers must be more vigilant than ever about avoiding them.
The days of passengers like Rodgers eluding a $15 or $50 fee are numbered. A proposed new law would see to that. It tasks the Transportation Security Administration with limiting the number of carry-ons travelers can bring through security checkpoints. Not hard to see the airline industry’s fingerprints all over that bill.
What to do?
1. Bring less.
Obviously, the best way to avoid paying for a checked bag is not to bring one in the first place. “Keep your bags as light as possible,” advises Barbara DesChamps, author of “It’s In The Bag: The Complete Guide to Lightweight Travel.” How can you tell if your luggage is overweight? I’ve been testing a Balanzza digital luggage scale that’s very portable and, at a $24.99 list price, doesn’t break the bank. Don’t take this advice too far, though. Pack a change of clothes, and for goodness sakes, wear something on the plane. US Airways passenger Keith Wright might have benefitted from that advice. He disrobed on a recent flight from Charlotte to Los Angeles, and ended up in the slammer.
2. Fly a no-fee airline.
JetBlue Airways doesn’t charge for the first checked bag. Neither does Southwest Airlines. In fact, it doesn’t charge for a second bag, either. Both of these companies have acknowledged what the rest of us already know: People travel with at least one bag. Shouldn’t we be rewarding these airlines with our business?
3. Look for loopholes.
They still exist. For example, US Airways exempts all of its elite frequent fliers, passengers traveling to and from Europe or Asia, Star Alliance Silver and Gold status members, unaccompanied minors, first class passengers and active duty military. Is anyone left? Mark Mitchell, American Airlines’ managing director of customer experience, recently told me that only 1 in 4 passengers pay luggage fees.
4. Ask someone else to pay.
Hotels are mindful that first-bag fees can hurt their business, so they’re offering to cover the fees. One of the first was Kimpton hotels. My friends over at Amelia Island, Fla., have a new program called “Pack Your Bags for Amelia Island” that offers air travelers an $80 room credit for checked baggage fees. If you have to pay for a checked bag, why not pass the bill off to someone else?
5. Get creative.
Passengers like Carolina Moore, a marketing consultant in North Las Vegas, Nev., are finding interesting ways of avoiding the fees. When she flew with her nine-month-old son recently, she discovered that consolidating her purse, diaper bag, car seat and port-a-crib into two large (and barely legal) bags allowed her to avoid paying the $15 fee. “So, I guess I didn’t really break any of the rules,” she says. “I just stretched them to capacity.”
6. Exploit policy differences.
Airlines don’t have uniform luggage rules, so when you’re flying on two or more airlines, use that to your advantage. Consider what happened to Kristi Nelson when she flew from Oahu to Portland recently. A Hawaiian Air agent in Lihue asked if she wanted to check her bags all the way through to the mainland. “You bet I do,” she said. “I thought for a minute and wondered how we would pay the baggage fee for our Northwest flight from Honolulu.” But when she landed, no one bothered to charge her.
7. Mail it.
Federal Express, UPS, the postal service, or a company like Luggage Forward can help you avoid the fees, but often, these options cost far more than what the airlines are charging. Then again, they’re probably more reliable. An overnight delivery service is far less likely to lose your belongings.
None of this ought to be necessary. If airlines could figure out how to make enough money from their fares, then they wouldn’t need to nickel and dime those of us who aren’t fortunate enough to be elite-level frequent fliers, unaccompanied minors or active duty military.
On a personal note, I never thought I’d have to write a column like this. Ever.
A decade ago, who could have imagined paying for airline food? Today, we’re lucky if there are bland snacks for sale. Checking two or three pieces of luggage was considered the air traveler’s inalienable right. Today we’re paying through the nose for our checked bags.
How do we fix this? I can think of two solutions. First, air travelers can buy tickets on airlines that don’t charge outrageous fees, like JetBlue and Southwest.
And second, our government can say, “enough!” It wouldn’t take much. The Transportation Department could rule that the price of an airline ticket must include at least one piece of checked luggage, and that would pretty much end this debate.
Will it? If the government hears from enough air travelers, sure. Here’s how to contact them.
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Like everyone else, I think the baggage fees are extremely sleazy. I’ll fly Southwest whenever I can, and if they take over Frontier my choices from DEN will be many.
I definitely take such fees into account when buying a ticket, comparing the bottom line, and I’d strongly encourage search engines such as Kayak to take them into account as well. It shouldn’t be hard to fill in “number of bags checked” when obtaining prices. (I also wish Kayak were able to list Southwest flights.)
Unless there is government action, the only way this thing will end is if the airlines find the market dictating that it end. Neither looks very likely at this point, but we can keep trying.
I maintain that if the government forced airlines to include checked bags it would be a disaster for two reasons.
Reason 1: It would cause an increase in fares as the airlines work feverishly to find a way to replace this lost revenue. Does anyone really believe that the airlines are just going to walk away from this revenue. Of course not. The end result would merely be a revenue shifting result. Instead of one group (infrequent fliers) paying this charge, it would be spread amongst everyone, aka redistribution of wealth.
The beauty of the checked bag fee is that the person who is paying for it is likely to be an infrequent flyer, who generally costs the airline more money due to his or her lack of flying experience.
Reason 2: Government intervention stiffles innovation and creatively. To avoid checked baggage fees, flyers will 1)pack lightly, 2)join the loyalty program, 3)fly a discount airline, etc. The power is in the passenger to decide what works best for him or her. That government intervention accomplishes is a one size fits all solution. Don’t believe me? Been to any government offices lately, say, the DMV?
Carver, based on your Reason #1 you bought into the airlines’ lies that the checked baggage fees were ‘unbundled’ from the price of the fare, even though the fares didn’t decrease, didn’t you?
Just charge $15 extra accross the board and that should solve the problem, if there was one. Since many don’t pay a baggage fee ordinarily anyway, that should cover two bags for some people.
Last I checked…. this is a free market society. I love how no one is allowed to make a profit. Fact is if you book an airline that charges the fee…. then dont cry about it. If its not the best deal then book the airline that gives you the best deal — fee or no fee.
Because we live in Houston and are on the north side of town, we ALWAYS fly Continental (it gets us where we want to go without having to change planes…)…Anyway, the trick we’ve learned with them is that, if you have a Continental card and use it to buy your ticket, the first checked bag is free. So, my husband and I each have a card now, and we just make sure that we end up sitting next to each other…Which works well since Continental will allow you to choose your seats when you book. It’s all about working the system :o)
Our last trip (to Cozumel) was a packing adventure – he was diving and I wasn’t, so we had to get all of our clothes and extras into one bag so that his dive bag had nothing but dive gear in it…The nice thing about Continental is that, if the bag is dive gear ONLY, you get a 70 lb weight allowance on the bag – which is VERY handy for divers…
I use several of those methods. Basically, I fly Southwest whenever it makes sense. And if it doesn’t, I just stretch the rules to the fullest. If you happen to see a guy at the airport with one huge bag that weighs in at 49.9999625 lbs, a laptop bag stuffed so full that looks like a duffel, etc., that would be me.
I apologize in advance for taking so long to board the plane. Don’t blame me, blame the airlines.
@Jack
That comment made no sense. Consider. Most of the goods and services that you purchase use relatively static pricing. Prices generally don’t change quickly, often, or by much. Airline tickets use a dynamic model. So you simply cannot pick a point in time and say, well the ticket prices have or haven’t dropped. You have to average it. In my case, ticket prices have plummetted. I used to pay between $200-300 to fly with one day notice from the Bay area to LA on American Airlines. Now I pay between $58 and $158 on average.
The point being is that there were two options. Either raise ticket prices on everyone, thus making the fee unavoidable, or raise it on those folks whose behavior warrants the fee.
@Carrie
How does that solve the problem? Your solution is to increase my ticket prices by $15 per ticket regardless of whether I have a bag or not, whether I have status or not, whether I have their credit card or not. No thanks.
The data on BTS’ site seems limited. But one table I found there gave some ideas how much airfare went up and/or dropped:
http://www.bts.gov/programs/economics_and_finance/air_travel_price_index/html/table_13.html
At the risk of possibly going off-topic, aren’t there sites (Yapta, I think) that historically tracks airfare changes over a period of time? Would be interesting to see how much airfare has changed prior, during, and after baggage fees were added.
I just traveled on a United flight with an extended stopover. Normally I don’t fly on that particular airline. No special reason; I just don’t. BUT – I am thinking of changing my mind because on this flight we were given regular updates from the flight deck on turbulance and other news regarding our flight and/or weather. Also we were given connecting flight information. That rarely happens on the ‘airline I love to hate’ (US Air). Anyway, I discovered that if I went online to print my boarding pass and also notified them of checked bags (2), I received a discount on my fees. Eight dollars ($8.00) is eight dollars but at least it is in MY pocket and not someone else’s. I wish all of the airlines would do something like that if they are chargng fees. Usually they want the whole amount. And, northern Michigan was wonderful!
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Lihue is on the island of Kauai, not Oahu. This info is good to know, however, since I will be traveling LIH-HNL-DEN in September on Hawaiian and United and plan to check my bags all the way through.
Chris…great Idea about contact the Dept of Transportation. I wrote a detailed email explaining my thoughts. Within a nano-second of send it I got back this reply below…obviousle they tagged certain words in my complaint (think they get a lot of compalints about airling inconsistant baggage charges? Her is what they sent me:
Question
——————————————————————————–
Objections to Checked Baggage Fees
Answer
——————————————————————————–
Thank you for your recent message concerning fees for checked baggage. We can appreciate your interest in this issue.
Congress deregulated air fares a number of years ago. The Department of Transportation has no authority to regulate the prices that airlines charge for air transportation services, including fees for checked bags. Transporting a checked bag costs an airline more than transporting a carry-on bag, and some airlines and individuals feel that passengers who do not check a bag should not be required to share the cost of checked baggage. A similar ‘unbundling” concept for services and prices has appeared for in-flight meals and beverages, and for purchasing a ticket from a reservations agent (as opposed to online).
As indicated above, DOT cannot regulate the amount an airline charges for checked baggage, whether or not those charges are included in the advertised fare, and currently there are no regulations that prohibit airlines from charging separately for checked baggage. However, DOT has taken steps to ensure that consumers are not misled by airlines in the charges they assess for baggage. In this regard, on May 13, 2008, DOT’s Aviation Enforcement Office issued detailed guidance to the airline industry designed to ensure that prospective air travelers receive timely and effective notice about charges for checked bags. See http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/rules/guidance.htm. We also have a rule that prohibits airlines from charging for assistive devices tendered as checked baggage by passengers with disabilities (e.g., a wheelchair or walker).
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts.
well to the guy above me, that email you got back, is what shows up beside the term non-answer in the dictionary