An Upside to Checked Bag Fees?
Sharon Hsu August 31, 2018
Young handsome man passenger in 20s with carry-on backpack collecting his luggage at conveyor belt in arrivals lounge of airport terminal building
Crowded overhead luggage bins and last-minute pleas from ticketing agents for passengers to check their baggage gateside point to how unpopular checked baggage fees are with travelers. Instituted over a decade ago, baggage fees have contributed significantly to airline profits. One op-ed writer now wonders if there’s actually an upside.
It has become fairly common knowledge among passengers that a huge part of airline profits now come from fees for checked baggage, upgrades, seat selection, or ticket changes. It has also become common for travelers to complain about paying fees for amenities that used to be bundled into the base ticket price.
Alison Schrager, in a piece for Quartzy, notes that passengers aren’t imagining things — fees are going up, with Air Canada, WestJet, and JetBlue all announcing recently that they would be raising their prices for checked baggage. But, Schrager argues, maybe these fees aren’t actually a bad thing.
She writes, “If it feels like you are getting less service when you fly, you are — but you are also paying less for it.” The logic goes like this: airlines used to bundle all their services into one flat base fare that every passenger paid. By de-coupling add-ons from the base fare, ticket prices have dropped overall, allowing travelers to decide exactly what they do and do not wish to pay for. And even if it feels like the boarding process has slowed due to the number of travelers placing luggage in overhead bins, Schrager notes that studies have shown that fewer checked-in bags correspond with fewer flight delays.
For passengers whose entire concern is the bottom line, not paying for checked bags or upgraded seats makes a lot of sense. But anyone longing for the days when good customer service wasn’t considered an add-on is out of luck.
[Photo: Shutterstock]
Southwest. Competitive fare, usually nice service, and the bag is included in the price.
BC, the founder of RyanAir once said that he would charge for using the loo if he could. Not for the pee fee, but rather because he could cut back on the number of toilets and add some seats.
The more hand carry people take onboard to avoid hefty checked baggage fees the more likely the flight will be delayed due to pax taking forever to either find an overhead bin or to have it gate checked. On a 737 Alaska Airlines flight SFO/SEA they started boarding at least 45 minutes prior to departure yet the flight still departed late. Compare that to a Southwest flight BNA/LAX where pax are permitted 2 pieces of checked luggage and there was still space in the overhead bins when the group C pax were boarding. If you're flying somewhere on a regional jet there is only overhead bin space on one side of the aircraft that will accommodate rollaboards. You'd better hope you're in group 1 or 2 for boarding as a gate agent counts the wheelie bags and once 25 have boarded they will gate check bag 26 onwards.
Oh please....we're better off because we no longer get full service unless we pay extra for it? What a load of bull.
A side-effect of checked baggage fees is that passengers now try to carry everything on, which results in slower boarding and deplaning as well as squabbles over bin space. I've heard flight attendants complain about having to mediate such squabbles and deal with distressed passengers who are physically incapable of reaching the bin space by themselves. In 2006 or 2007, I flew back from LHR after a terrorism scare that briefly had airlines flying out of the UK allowing each passenger only ONE small carry-on of any sort. (I fortunately had a large purse and a small computer, but anyway...) It was astonishing how fast people boarded and deplaned.