United Airlines, without as much as a memo to travel agents, quietly raised their domestic change fees from $150 to $200, per ticket, per change. Plus, they raised their Latin America penalties from $250 to $300.
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ancillary fees
U.S. Airlines have become, with the notable exception of Southwest, a quagmire of pricing options. One of the most effective ways to obscure the true cost of a product is to offer so many variations that consumers are confused. Airlines have moved into that direction and further. They also want to make the ability to compare prices across airlines next to impossible.
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Hotels are eagerly following the lead of the major U.S. airlines, which collected an estimated $11.6 billion in fees in 2011, according to Sorensen. By comparison, the record $1.85 billion that the hotel industry earned through fees, according to a recent NYU study, seems laughably small.
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Recently, I have been on several TV news programs speaking about ancillary fees. Fox News did a segment on which airline fees are worth it and which can and should be avoided.
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The airlines are in the process of rebundling fees that they just unbundled. After removing everything associated with service from their basic airfares, airlines are now allowing consumers to get bargains on fees by buying them in bundles. Airlines have bundled fees to allow consumers to avoid fees that the airlines created themselves.
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Over the past three years I have been working together with the Consumer Travel Alliance (CTA) to have airlines disclose ancillary fees so that consumers can compare the full cost of travel. Many have questioned why I have been like a dog on a pant leg about this issue. It is simply because consumers are being deceived by the airlines with unrealistic airfares.
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Being misleading and deceptive in order to get the sale, has been the province of unscrupulous companies and salesmen for centuries. The warning, “buyer beware,” goes back millennia. However, continuing with that duplicity after the sale is beyond the pale.
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Airline fees have reached absurdity, now there is a “Passenger Usage Fee” for simply using a Spirit Airline ticket not purchased from the airline at its ticket counter. I’m sorry, but this is a fee too far; some others agree and have filed a class action suit in federal courts.
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What I learned at the most recent meeting of the Advisory Committee on Aviation Consumer Protections
Though the data is now available, neither airline websites nor the central computer systems that power travel agencies have created consumer-friendly systems to inform passengers of baggage fees that can be compared across airlines.
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