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More Fees, Please
Opinion · August 29, 2004

True, its executives are incompetent. Its service is inadequate. But grant our failing airline business this: it certainly is inventive.

I admit, I doubted America's worst-run industry had any creativity left in it. Despite generous government loans and subsidies, at least one major airline, Delta Air Lines, is on the brink of bankruptcy. Another, US Airways, is reportedly close to insolvency.

But I was wrong, so very wrong.

In the middle of our summer vacation, when it apparently thought no one was paying attention, Northwest Airlines announced new fees that stunned most industry observers. The Minneapolis carrier said it would soon begin charging customers $5 extra for tickets booked through a phone agent, $7.50 for tickets bought through a travel agent and $10 for those purchased at an airline ticket counter.

The reason? It wanted to "lower its distribution costs," and bring them in line with low-cost carriers such as Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways.

But it turns out some of us were paying attention.

And we are impressed.

In fact, after the initial shock of Northwest's audacity wore off - after all, how many businesses actually charge their distributors to sell a product? - I now know what must be done.

Thanks to Northwest's bold leadership, it's clear that the key to the airline industry's survival doesn't lie in something as trivial as streamlining routes or improving operating efficiencies. No, the secret to its success, and perhaps even its profitability, is in adding more fees. Northwest estimates it will save $70 million a year with its new surcharges.

Don't stop there, I say.

Why do airlines still give us free sodas and pretzels? That costs money, doesn't it? Where in the airlines' terms and conditions does it say anything about refreshments? In order to bring costs down, airlines must add a snack surcharge and start collecting it from their passengers.

The bone-dry cabin air can really make you build up a thirst, so I'm sure this fee would be a big moneymaker.

Then there's luggage. Why do airlines check in so much of our luggage - 50 pounds worth of it - without charging us? Does FedEx give you the first 50 pounds of your packages for free? Does the U.S. Postal service allow you to send the first two parcels "on the house" before you have to start paying for stamps.

Of course not.

Come on, folks. There's no such thing as a free ride - especially for the clothes you wear on vacation.

How about a fee to use the toilet? I'm not about to suggest the airlines make all of its WCs coin-operated. But maybe there's a market for a lavatory with no line, upgraded soaps and hand towels. The kind of toilet that's cleaned regularly, as opposed to once a week.

I'd pay money for that.

If the airlines start to depend on fees for profitability, I say raise the existing surcharges, and raise them high. Why charge only $100 to change a non-changeable ticket? It should be at least $200, because after all you're changing something that can't be changed, and that's awfully difficult, isn't it?

The same goes for the unaccompanied minor fee. I mean $40 is way, way too little. Considering how much trouble kids can be on a flight, and considering the going rate for a babysitter, airlines should double their fee. At least.

And what's with the free movies? It used to cost $4 to watch a movie on a plane, and then airlines started giving away the headsets. Never mind that these films weren't any good to begin with, but please, did the executives setting these policies sleep through Economics 101?

Here's a newsflash: It costs at least $8 to see a movie in a theater. The airlines should take what is rightfully theirs.

There are so many wonderful opportunities for generating additional revenues, whether it's implementing new fees or just increasing old ones.

Justifying the fees may be something of a trick, though. After all, the airlines are in the service industry, and at some point they'll have to explain themselves to their customers.

Northwest's reasons for the new service fees, for example, are absurd. It suggests that the new charges make sense because its low-fare competitors have similar distribution costs.

But they don't. No other carriers had these fees before Northwest instituted them.

The airline's recent actions also imply that its cost of selling tickets online is zero. That is also false. The carrier, like all of its competitors, has invested millions of dollars in its Web site over the years. Booking a ticket online costs it money, and if it wants to be consistent, it should also charge for reservations made through the Internet.

Northwest's otherwise brilliant creativity is eclipsed by unfortunate lapses in logic. What it should have said is that it wants our money and is now going to help itself to it, thanks very much.

That's OK. Impose the fees now, I say. You can always think of a reason later.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.

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