That's a lot of checked in luggage and boxed sandwiches. While it's easy to understand the financial problems of the older airlines, it's hard to swallow as a customer. On my most recent travels in the US I've had to cough up a few hundred dollars more for luggage fees. Somehow the airlines must think that I've unloaded luggage along the way and now have smaller bags that can fit in the overhead bins, since international travel does not (yet) charge for normal luggage.
What is most annoying about the fees is the inability to show flexibility by the airlines. When I questioned Delta about the $25 fee on a recent flight that was canceled and delayed for two days they refused to even respond. I spent a lot of my own money and two days of work time to travel back and forth to the airport yet they were uninterested in waving the luggage fee. Even better, it took a day for them to get my luggage to me after the travels.
The budget airlines of Europe slap on a lot of fees but they're also charging a lot less -- there's a quite fair quid pro quo. Something about these massive fees the American companies charge is wrong and it needs to change.
A $10 in-flight meal here, a $25 bag fee there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.And in the US market, the increase is a whopping 87% increase since 2010.
As in $32.5 billion, which, according to a just-released analysis, is the estimated amount the global airline industry will make in ancillary revenues this year. According to the Amadeus Worldwide Estimate of Ancillary Revenue for 2011, that’s a 43.8 percent increase over the year before.
NOTE FROM JOHN: The airlines basically made a windfall by taxing you during an economic crisis. Maybe someone should be Occupying United.
