Originally Posted by
Jerseyguy
I think your right about airline imposed fees like the CIC, any fuel surcharges, etc. However, I think the airport or goverment imposed fees should be able to be added at check-out. Frontier doesn't charge me the the CMH Passenger Facility charge thats a fee from the Columbus Regional Airport Authority. The LAS PFC is a fee from Clark County, NV. Any airline imposed fee should be included in the total. Its not much money but an increased goverment/airport fee now gets absorbed by the airline because lets say Frontier is charging $19 for the flight from CMH to LAS. Columbus says, well we have a new terminal we need to pay for and ups its PFC to $9.00 from $4.50. Frontier has 2 options it can "raise fares" to $23.50 or it can keep the $19 fare and eat the extra $4.50 because $19 fares sound better than $23.50 and besides Frontier is not charging you $23.50 to go from CMH to LAS its charging you $10, CMH and LAS are getting the other $13.50
The one place this is totally out of control is car rentals, why should Avis be able to charge me a surcharge to recoup registration fees, did I miss the part where registering a car with a state is not the normal cost of running a rental car business??
I think the counter-argument with the government-imposed fees is that they'd be the same (or similar) for any other airline, so it's at least a level playing field. A connecting flight would trip more PFCs than a non-stop, but the fees generally have caps. If memory serves, eons ago the legacies tried to punish Southwest by arguing to reduce the ticket tax (from 10%, I believe) to the current rate and substituting segment taxes instead, effectively penalizing airlines that weren't hub-and-spoke and would have more connections.
I also remember way back when airlines said they'd start itemizing all the taxes (back when they had paper tickets). They can still do that if they want (i.e. give a breakdown of that), but given how that's a preferred place for airline-imposed fees that some airlines try to make look like taxes, the info isn't always complete.
As for the car rents, those have gotten unbelievable, with 6 or more different added lines in some cities. Some that are taxes are really ridiculous and unfair, like Kansas City and the very expensive "downtown arena fee." You've also got BOTH the vehicle license fee and an extra road tax in some places, as well as high customer facility charges (for consolidated rental places) AND concession recoupment fees. The CFCs make the consolidated facilities look more like something done TO you than FOR you, and the concession recoupment should really be a cost-of-doing-business (as are others that aren't taxes). You also get "energy surcharges"
and companies like Avis that want $1/day if FF miles are earned.
BTW, one of the worst states on the tax side is Taxes...er, Texas.