I was checking out some flight info on Travelocity today, and ran across this message behind Continental and Delta flights.
These airlines are now charging an additional $25 to check a second bag, for some economy (looks like the cheap ones) tickets. This extra fee isn’t included in the ticket price. You have to pay it seperately at check in. I’m waiting for them to announce that they are also reducting/enforcing the size and number of bags you can take on the airplane.
What the hell? You’ve already minimized my seat size, reducted the number of flights, over booked the ones you have, taken away even my bag of peanuts. You’ve cut the number of ticketing agents until the lines are now crazy long. I hope this comes back to bit you in the ass. I know I’ll be going out of my way to avoid these 2 airlines.
I don’t have strong feelings about this particular new fee, but I really hate the trend it represents. I don’t understand why the only option is to cut back on every conceivable extra until the experience is as miserable as possible. If fuel costs have gone up, why can’t they just raise ticket prices accordingly? Personally, I’d rather pay $450 for a flight and have it be halfway decent than pay $400 and feel like I’m being gouged and/or given the lowest quality service at every turn.
I’m fine with it. Added weight requires extra fuel. So, those who want (or need) to bring extra baggage can pay for the additional fuel they’re consuming. If someone’s only bringing one bag, why should they have to subsidize everyone else? There’s plenty of things about the airline industry to complain about; this one is…meh.
While I agree with your general sentiment, I don’t think the majority of consumers do. They want cheap at any cost, as it were.
And in this particular case, I’d rather have the extra “cost” be paid by the people who are bringing the second bag. If it’s a choice between everyone paying $5 (or whatever) and only those who are bringing a second bag paying an extra $25, I’d go for the latter.
Of course, with the recent increases due to fuel costs, it feels like we’re paying extra already, with this on top of it.
Frankly, I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand, I’m so used to air travel including a certain amount of amenities and luggage in the basic price. Free booze (at least on international flights), food, and two pieces of baggage.
It always weirds me out on domestic flights, where booze isn’t free, and meals quite often aren’t free, either. But, on the other hand, meals and drinks aren’t included in ticket price on trains or buses either, so why should I expect the same for flights?
On second thought, why should everybody pay for those amenities if they don’t need them? I know it looks better from a customer perceptual standpoint (nickel and diming never looks good), but I almost never travel with 2 checked-in bags. If it brings down my ticket cost $15 or so, then I have no problem with charging folks $25 for a second bag.
While I would like to agree with you, company travel departments, and most people just look at price. @ $450 you will have empty seats. @ $400 they will be full.
It’s not just weight and fuel. It’s loading times, too - less time at the gate means more productive use of a lot of expensive staff, and a very expensive plane. Also possibly a tool in negotiating lower fees from the airport, and so on.
I don’t have a problem with it. It seems fairer that we all pay for what we bring, as opposed to paying the average cost of what everybody brings.
What I don’t like about the policy, is that it will encourage people to carry on even more shit, which is at a ridiculous level already. When people bring on a bag suitable for an Everest assault, it slows down the boarding and deplaning process considerably. I wish someone at the airlines would grow a pair and actually enforce carry on limits.
I don’t know about that. A lot of stuff happens at the gate at the same time; refueling, loading baggage, stocking meals, preflight inspections. I don’t see a bag or two difference between passengers affecting the gate time much, if at all.
I’m going on what I’ve heard about Ryanair, who make Southwest look like the QE2, with turnaround times sometimes as short as 20 minutes. It’s not ‘a bag or two’, it’ll probably encourage ten, twenty, fifty people to bring one less bag, even if it just means packing the same stuff differently. And yes, there’s a lot of things happening at the gate, but if this reduces the chance of a small delay with the baggage being the one thing turning 20 minutes into 25, then so be it (from the airline’s POV, obviously).
Myself, I don’t like having to carry the lion’s share of my luggage in one big huge suitcase the size of me. I’d rather have two smaller containers that are thirty pounds each than one that’s fifty; at least I can foist the thirty pound bag on a helpful friend. And I hate bringing anything in the carryon. If I wasn’t worried about getting my laptop or camera stolen, I’d carry nothing more than what fits in a small purse: phone, wallet, passport, music.
Oh, and before anyone gets shirty about fifty pounds worth of stuff: that was packing for about nine days going to Canada in December. I’m a fairly large girl (I do not lap over the armrest, though, thanks for asking) and my clothes are therefore larger.
Nor should there be. The price of fuel has skyrocketed in recent years; you would have seen a bigger fare increase if there weren’t charges such as the second bag fee.
I almost started a thread about this when our airline began the practice. To be honest, I’m not thrilled about having to pay for a second bag, either. But it makes a lot of business sense. Flights are becoming more expensive to operate; that money has to come from somewhere. And if not in this form, then I imagine someone would start a Pit thread about how airlines are hiking up fares across the board.
At the same time, though, the standard of “you bring more weight, you pay for it” is not equally applied. On most carriers, infants under 2 still travel free. Our airline’s justification was “less than x% of our customers check a second bag, so it makes sense to have them pay if they’re bringing more weight, rather than distribute the cost among everyone.” Okay, fine. Then the employees chimed in with “so, since x% of our customers weigh under 200 lbs, why not charge more for those who add more weight, instead of distributing the cost among everyone?”
But, this is the way it is. And pretty much has to be for the forseeable future.
This is an excellent example of where simple mathematics aren’t going to explain things. Infants under 2 will, before long, become children requiring their own seat, while still being a minute payload. So, treat them as precious cargo, and cultivate a loyalty among the grateful parents. Expensive in the short term, but very rewarding later on.
I used to travel with everything in a 2500 cubic inch backpack (this one, I think), and I loved it, especially going into foreign destinations. I could breeze right through baggage claim and clear customs & immigration before a single checked bag came off my plane. But the stupid and worthless 3 oz liquid limits have killed that, pretty much. Granted, that was primarily into tropical or other warm destinations so as to fit a week or two worth of stuff in a backpack!
Let’s see now- the allowable weight of each bag has been lowered, and now you can take less of them. Okay, whatever. I’ve been saying for years that people should pack less.
Seriously- not that big a deal. How often do folks really lug two checked bags per person? We spent two weeks in NYC last Xmas (me, hubby, two kids), and it was cold, so we had our winter gear. But we still only had one suitcase for the adults (plus miscellaneous stuff in there), one for both kids to share, plus a small one one for the coats and sweaters. It wasn’t hard at all, and we didn’t go grunge either.
