Originally Posted by
Steve M
What was announced recently by one airline, whereby they were charging a $5 "convenience fee" to book on the website but offered free in-person ticketing at the airport, is quite interesting. It's obviously more expensive to handle a transaction in person at the airport than on the website, yet there's a surcharge to use the website. It seems obvious to me that the airline realized that it can make far more money from charging for website use than it would lose from people that would prefer to ticket in person at the airport and run up labor expense. So, they offer the more expensive option (to the airline) for free just to be able to say "that's the base price" even though they know that most customers will be using the telephone or website.
I think you've hit upon it exactly. Take Allegiant Air, for instance. They charge a fee of
$11.50 per passenger for the convenience of booking online or over the telephone. The only way to avoid this fee, and pay the base ticket price, is to go to the airport and buy the ticket in person.
The catch?
Most Allegiant Air ticket counters are open only for brief periods of time. In FAT, for instance, the counter is only open from 1500-1700 on MO, TH, FR, SU .... for a grand total of 8 hours a week. Of course, during those two hour windows of opportunity, the counter agents are undoubtedly handling passengers checking in for the day's flight...so to buy a ticket you have to stand in line behind a crowd of luggage-schlepping travelers.
Plus, unless you can get someone to drop you off and circle the airport, you'd have to pay for an hour of parking. Plus, the gas it took to get you to/from the airport in the first place, not to mention the time. When you add it all up, the $11.50 convenience doesn't look too bad, unless you have a family of 4 in which case it really adds up.
The reason legacy carriers can't get away with this is that their bread and butter is biz travellers who are in the airport frequently anyway, so the inevitable result would be long lines at ticket counters as passengers with a 2 hour layover might as well stand in line to buy a ticket for a future flight, thus avoiding the gouge fee.