Surface Interval

The de-bundling of fees has just about reached rock bottom:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/spi...ags-2010-04-06

What's next a Body Mass Index multiplier?

Here is the office over/under: Will Spirit go under before CO picks this up?

COEWR2587

I personally think this is Bull s***. With the airfares going up and service going down, the least these people can do is let us bring one damn bag on the plane. I get its a business, but when is enough, enough?

TommyC80

Sure is BS. I like how the do it under the guise of "offering lower fares" and "giving customers a choice" This is another method of improving margins, so just call it that instead of treating the traveling public like idiots.

belynch

CO will only charge people who bring bags too large to fit "wheels in/out" in the overhead bin.

$200 and a public flogging. (300 if they live in Boca)

Buster CT1K

Huh, they should have imposed that on my last CO flight, where self-important inconsiderate F passengers loaded up the F overheads with bags that specifically could not fit in wheels in/out.

ConciergeMike

I am hoping and praying for yes. NK is evil, rude and inconsiderate on their best day.

rolov

Soon there will be a charge to bring your jacket onboard.

ConciergeMike

The comments on Today In The Sky are priceless.

sbm12

And they do, as long as it fits under the seat in front of you.
I doubt NK is going under anytime soon.

The bigger picture question is whether this step in un-bundling is enough to shift booking trends. US eventually backed down on their charging for water and sodas in Y. Then again, Spirit has held fast to that revenue stream.

But consumers are pretty consistent in splitting their travel purchase habits into two distinct categories: the time of the ticket purchase and the day of travel. As long as they think they got a deal in phase one and didn't get hurt too badly when violated in phase two they'll continue that pattern. Only once consumers actually manage to put the numbers together and see the overall costs as a single number will the patterns have any potential to change. FWIW, CO takes advantage of this same behavioral pattern to offer the "buy up to first" fare difference sales on your reservations. And CO customers are loving it, at least the ones sitting in F are.

Critic

Spirit is the closest thing the US has to RyanAir, so it's not overly surprising that they'd try something like this. (If memory serves, they also turned their whole cabin into a huge billboard a while back.) I don't see legacy carriers like CO trying this - their customer base would revolt. I think you'd see carry-on fees on B6 or WN before you'd see them on CO...meaning not anytime soon.

ConciergeMike

The two CEO's are indeed good friends. Baldanza visited the UK a few years ago to consult with Michael O'Leary and the result of that trip overseas was NK's rollout of checked bag fees.

radonc1

In some ways this may be a game changer. Third party vendors of tickets will now be able to add the luggage charge to the basic ticket price since for all practical purposes, no one travels without a bag, so every Spirit ticket price would be upped by at least $40 at a minimum. I suspect that this would make Spirit either a:drop their base ticket price by $40 to make it look the same as everyone elses or b: drop the carry on charge.
I say let them try it!

radonc1

If this is indeed true, why wouldn't it work for an enhanced Y level such as E+? (Of course this presumes that CO policy would prevent poaching of those seats while in flight )

entropy

Just wait until they CO is advertising "Unlimited Free Oxygen to our Elites! *Subject to capacity controls"

HeathrowGuy

Folks said that about checked baggage fees a few years back, and we saw how that turned out.