Originally Posted by
dulciusexasperis
Strickerj, do you really think you don't pay for your carry-on bag? In simple terms, an airline sells you a fuel allowance. That is, they calculate the average weight of a passenger and baggage and then divide the total fuel cost to fly from A to B and divide by the number of passengers at that average weight. That gives them a price per seat. Whether you check a bag or not is irrelevant, you pay the price per seat. What ticket pricing model a given airline uses to come up with that amount is irrelevant. I can pay $100 for a seat plus $10 for a checked bag OR a carry-on bag. Or I can pay $110 for a seat with a carry-on OR checked bag included. Or I can pay $110 for a seat with a carry-on bag for free but a fee for a checked bag. Whatever way you want to do it, I pay for my allocation of fuel (I'm ignoring other expenses like maintenance etc. obviously for simplicity) and it is $110.
The reason why an airline chooses to add $10 for a checked bag is simple. People look for the lowest price. So if one airline shows $100 from A to B and another airline shows $110 from A to B, the people opt to book with the firs airline. Then they discover to check a bag will cost $10 on that airline and so try to travel carry-on only to save $10 and tell us, 'oh no, it isn't the $10, I am too busy and important to wait at a luggage carousel and besides I don't want them to lose my bag.' Yeah right.
Ask yourself why this issue with overhead bins exists? How did it come about? It did not exist 30 years ago you know. So what has changed and why?
I’m not sure I follow how this relates to what I said... as of right now, checking a bag costs extra, whereas carrying your baggage on board is free or included in the ticket price, however you prefer to look at it. Conflicts occur over the bin space because passengers are carrying more baggage on board to avoid the checked bag fees, which didn’t exist 30 years ago. The deterioration of customer service by the airlines has gained some considerable attention lately, so the point of my post was just, somewhat in jest, that now wouldn’t be a good time to make such a drastic and seemingly vindictive cutback as getting rid of the overhead bins.