Bag fees on FL planes painted with WN livery?
 

I just read this article where a WN spokesperson says that bag fees will remain on FL into 2013 with no target date to end the fees in sight. The article below states that FL planes are being painted to the WN livery as soon as April.

My question: Will those newly painted planes be used for FL flights even though they have a WN paint scheme? If they are, wouldn't WN be required to waive bag fees for those flights since all their advertising says 'Bags fly free on Southwest'? Seems like a big case of false advertising to fly on a Southwest plane but still have to pay fees for the bags in the belly of the plane.


http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/ne...ees-after.html

http://www.ajc.com/business/airtran-...n-1400774.html

I'm suing WN over false advertising of "bags fly free." They charged me $466 to fly my mother-in-law out from Tulsa.

Where's the rim shot?

Seriously though, I agree they should not charge bag fees if it's a SWA plane.

No

It's my understanding that, when a plane is converted to WN, it will fly as WN, with no bag fees.

It won't be FL flying as WN or WN flying as FL.

Local media did a story on this last evening. Bag fees will remain intact for all AirTran flights, despite being owned by SWA.

Bags fly free on SWA flights.

Yes, but I think the question is what constitutes an AirTran flight? Can AirTran operate a flight on a 717 (and thus charge bag fees) when the paint scheme is WN? Does the paint scheme change ownership of the plane from FL to WN?

When the paint scheme changes, the aircraft is converted from FL to WN service, thus there are no bags fees after its converted to WN.

It does not appear that FL will be operating any planes on behalf of WN or vice versa.

What will happen if codeshare is initiated?

According to Resolution 302 WN would be MSC as WN is the 1st marketing carrier.

Yes they can - but they won't, based upon all announcements made. If that 717 has WN livery, you will buy the ticket on the WN web site flying on a WN route with WN seating and flying under all WN rules and WN CoC.

I'm doubting a code share will ever occur. At the rate the code share work is progressing, they could have most of the planes converted instead.

That is the $64,000 question. As for the bag fees, they already are competing against themselves with and without bag fees in markets like ATL-HOU and BOS-BWI. It's not a matter of legalities, just a matter of (potential) customer confusion or unhappiness.

Same is true if at some point AirTran-painted planes fly as Southwest or vice versa. No laws or regulations would be broken because the contract of carriage is between the passenger and the carrier selling the service. Doesn't matter who operates it. If the E190 is temporarily grounded and JetBlue contracts with Sun Country to pick up some of their flying for a time, it's not Sun Country's contract of carriage in effect --it's JetBlue's

The bigger issue is potential confusion and/or unhappiness with the customer base about fees versus no fees. It's very subjective to guess the amount of bad will Southwest is building based on hammering away at the evil of various fees charged by other airlines, while still charging those same fares at a large subsidiary. Early on it probably wasn't as big a deal, as "nothing will change right away" makes sense. But as more and more time passes, and as Southwest increasingly intermixes with AirTran, the fees charged by AirTran are likely to be increasingly glaring.

While many things that were stated have not occurred, it has been clearly articulated and not yet broken, that your statement will not happen.

what about IROPs?
 

Does FL put passengers on WN flights when FL has maintenance issues? Is it possible those FL pax are paying for bags that travel on WN planes while the WN pax are not?