If you think this is a regurgitated post from this time last year, you would be wrong. Another year, another new set of annoying 'fees' that the airlines make you pay for the simplest things: like reserving a seat, not pre-paying baggage fees (I'm not sure I understand that one - you pay $25 to check a bag and another $5 fee for not pre-paying the baggage fee online?) among other new fees. It was inevitable of course - last year when fuel surcharges were all the rage, airlines found that they could maintain low priced tickets and then sock you with user fees that helped raise the ticket price to what they really wanted all along.
Not that I don't have sympathy for them. The reason they don't just raise ticket fees is because not all airlines would do it and then some would 'appear' to have better prices because they quote the base fares and then add on the surcharges. And the reason some airlines do THAT is because these are user fees - if you aren't checking bags, you won't be charged luggage surcharges much less the pre-payment penalty.
I have hesitated to even write about these fees, since they seem so common now but perhaps the occasional holiday traveler will be taken aback at all the minor surcharges. For them I pass along the N. Y. Times article detailing the state of fees for this holiday period and into next year to boot. The article is titled "Even as Fares Creep Up, AIrlines Tack on Fees Too" and may be a primer for some novice travelers. The rest of the well learned traveling public will no doubt shrug and pay - after all, did you want to WALK to Cincinnati from San Diego with your luggage trailing behind you? What choices do you really have?
And that's what the airlines know and we are learning!
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