UA-NYC

Point me to the spin?

It's addl $ for all. But - three majors made $ in Q1 - the 4th didn't, and decided to raise more revenue in a different way. Simple as that.

CDKing

DL matched yesterday? AA matched today. I guess its not going back down.

Boraxo

More business for WN from those who require frequent changes or those like me who want to lock price early and get credit if price drops.

Less incentive to buy legacy airline tix 11 months in advance - general public will start waiting until 4-6 months out to buy tix.

Only time will tell whether net revenue from new fees (and unused tix) exceeds biz that is switched to other carriers and benefits to carriers from early bookings.

I predict more discounting by these carriers as early bookings evaporate.

uastarflyer

If WN matches then we are all toast.

Until then, the majority of US has a very good alternative option.

astroflyer

I wouldn't be surprised if this starts to trigger some congress members thinking about new regulations needed. At some point where the change fee > average one-way ticket price, the tickets are de facto completely non-refundable. This may need to be disclosed more adequately.

Alternatively, it could make sense to have a sliding change-fee scale based on time to departure. Someone making a change 6 months out has a reasonable argument that the carrier has plenty of time to resell or adjust inventory; whereas, someone making a change 2 days out greatly limits the carrier's ability to resell that inventory.

On the flip side, maybe this relationship has to be made more symmetrical, like it is in the EU. Perhaps the US needs institute the rather serious delay/cancellation compensation that the EU has instituted. This way carriers are penalized just as much for "changes" to passengers' itineraries.

AAExPlat

I like the way you think!

fastair

The sliding scale (as difficult as it would be to impliment) was already suggested (by me) and isn't a bad concept. As for the 2nd part, one should then have the govt do the same for phone service/cable/internet/electricity/water that cuts out, public busses and trains that are late, penalties for chinese cigarette lighters that fall apart on the 1st use, and most of all, concerts that are cncld due to injury/death of the performer(s). We have enough legislation regulating the free enterprise system in ways that that the consumer can regulate far more effectivly with their dollar.

Weez_1000

^ Ive never done it before but i will most certainly do it now.

raehl311

That's a pretty long list of crappy analogies.

When was the last time you paid a fee to cancel your phone/cable/internet/electricity/water service?

When was the last time a concert promoter invalidated your ticket because you sold it to someone else?

Only airlines sell you a ticket and tell you it's worth $0 if you personally don't fly on it and charge you hundreds of dollars to change or cancel it (for airline credit).

fastair

The analogies are fine, your interpretation of them is lacking. You don't pay a fee to cncl your flight, only a fee to reuse the credit, which you can't do with ticketmaster.

I paid T-Mobile a fee when I switched to ATT before my contract was up. I would do the same if I cncld my cable or internet before my contract was up.

Again, there is no fee to cncl, just like a concert or a sports event, you just lose the purchase, although with airlines you can recoup some of the money (amount paid minus $200) for future use, which you can't for most tickets for most events in the world.

I'm guessing you never realized that the letter "N" in the fare basis code is short for "non-refundable", but the airlines aren't as strict on that meaning as the other things I mentioned. While there is no refund, some of that money (total-$200) can be reused.

uastarflyer

You know what is the best analogy? Southwest Airlines. And guess what. Their policy is the best. And United is (tied for) the worst.

njcommodore

Frontier's new whacky fees are knocking all the change fees out of the news.

fieldeng

The fees are no different than what Spirit and Allegiant have been doing for a while. It's not really news.

The spin is simple: It's bad for UA, ok for the others because it's icing. In short, the fee will do the same thing for every carrier in that it's gravy money for all of them. This can't be spun as a negative for UA.

Dadaluma83

I do agree with a sliding change fee based on how far out until departure but we don't need the government telling the airlines they have to do that, if an airline sees a competitive advantage in doing something like that they will implement it on their own and we don't need the government telling the airlines they have to provide mandatory compensaion during disruptions, even weather. All that will do is raise airfares or fees even more than they already are in order to cover all that extra costs of providing compensation for everything.

Air travel is about the most elastic thing there is as far as demand. Air travel is never a necessity like food, clothing, housing. If the fees are too expensive or too much of a hassle people can just stay home or drive, simple enough then the airlines would have to lower the fees or airfares to get people to travel. The free market is a tug of war especially when demand for a product is extremely elastic.

UA-NYC

It's bad for all of "us", but of course good for the airlines (at least in the short-term sense).

You're missing the deeper point though - the one airline that led with this fee increase was the only one out of the four majors to NOT have a profitable Q1. Correlation IMO.

No different than bragging about your YOY ancillary revenue increases and trying to gloss over the whole core operational revenue failings.