Baggage Fees
A few months ago in this space, I wrote about courage and how a lot of people don’t know they have it. This month, we’ll be talking about people who are completely lacking the courage chromosome and could use an emergency implant, stat. I’m talking about the CEOs of the nation’s airlines and the people they take advice from, particularly the ones who said it was a smart thing to charge people for checked baggage.
You want to gouge us for extra leg room? Headphones? Cashews? Knock yourself out. But charging people to pay for the privilege of taking a suitcase with them when they’re traveling is the most contemptible affront to consumers since the invention of the modern airplane seat. It is craven, cynical, wrongheaded behavior that should embarrass anyone who runs an airline.
The only major carriers in the United States with the institutional cojones to buck this trend are JetBlue and Southwest. To their CEOs, I say, “You da men!” I don’t fly as much as I used to—maybe three or four times a year—but I assure you that if JetBlue or Southwest is going where I’m going, one of them will always get my business over any other carrier. Doesn’t matter that JetBlue is a little too chummy (“Our flight today is under the command of Captain Larry”) and Southwest still doesn’t do seat assignments (unless you pay extra). Let me check a bag for nothing and I’m yours.
To the rest, I say, “Buy a freaking clue!” Or give a listen to JetBlue’s CEO, David Barger, who had this to say about baggage fees: “There are such things as bad profits. … On the backs of the customer, airlines are driving profitability and I think it’s foolish. I think it’s a short-term gain and will cost airlines in the long term.”
Granted, this problem isn’t even an issue for frequent fliers who travel often enough to earn exemptions from luggage fees. But I’m surprised there hasn’t been more of an uprising from traveling hoi polloi. True, there’s a bill in the U.S. Senate that would require all United States airlines to allow passengers to check one bag free of charge. And Janet Napolitano, the head of Homeland Security, has said the resulting crush of carry-on bags has slowed the screening process so much that’s it’s costing us an extra $260 million a year. But come on! Do we really need to nanny-state the airline companies into doing the proper and ethical thing?
Apparently, we do, because it took the U.S. Department of Transportation to require airlines to be honest about the actual fares they charge when taxes are included.
You and I both know that bag fees are a cowardly dodge because the airlines simply don’t want to raise their published fares. (That’s also why they didn’t want to show us the taxes.) They nickel-and-dime us while perpetuating the charade that air travel is still a bargain, oblivious of the fact that they are almost universally despised for treating us like morons. And we go along because we don’t have a lot of choice in the matter. Amtrak and Greyhound aren’t viable options for most of us on tight schedules.
Domestic airlines collected an estimated $3.4 billion in bag fees last year. I’d be fine if they tacked all of that onto their fares and quit the little shell game they’re playing. We’d still fly with them because, duh, we have to.
I have no problem with airlines making money. I have a huge problem with airlines making money by treating customers contemptuously because they know they can get away with it.
JOHN LEVESQUE is the managing editor of Seattle Business magazine.
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