American Airlines Charging Fee For Checked Baggage
This is a guest post from Ashley at Wide Open Wallet, where she blogs about personal finance. Her site is a very real, down to earth glance at her family’s financial journey. Please pay her site a visit and consider subscribing to her RSS feed.
In case you haven’t heard, as of June 15th, American Airlines is charging a fee for checking bags. And not a small fee either. They will be charging $15 for the first bag, $25 for the second, $100 for the third, fourth, and fifth, and $200 for the sixth bag. Dang. This irritates me quite a bit.
I understand that times are very tough right now. I don’t fault them for raising prices, and I don’t fault them for cutting services, but I think this is a terrible move. It bothers me because it doesn’t affect all passengers equally. It affects families more than anyone else. As a single adult it’s pretty easy to pack what you need for a weekend get away in a carry on bag. But families have to take tons of stuff. And it’s already so expensive to travel as a family. I don’t think it’s fair to have a fee that affects one group of people so much, and another group of people so little. I would much rather just see the cost of the ticket increase by $15 or $20 and have it spread across the board.
The last time we flew as a family was in October of 2006. We bought three tickets for about $200 each, my son was only 10 months old so he didn’t need a ticket. Our luggage consisted of three suitcases, two car seats, a stroller, a pack and play, a huge diaper bag, and two backpacks. We carried on the diaper bag and backpacks. They don’t charge the fee for strollers or car seats (how nice of them) so that means we would have had to pay for the three suitcases and a pack and play. It would have cost us three $15 fees and one $25 fee, a grand total of $70. Each way. So even after we paid $600 for plane tickets we would have been charged another $140. I think that’s unfair. If we had been three adults flying we could have packed what we needed in our carry-ons. Or if that wasn’t enough space then we could have shared a fourth suitcase and just paid one $15 fee. We wouldn’t have needed to bring a week’s worth of baby food, formula, diapers, coloring books, teddy bears, bottles, blankets, etc… We had thought about mailing some of our stuff a week in advance just for ease, these fees may have made that more cost effective.
And besides the fact that I think it’s unfair to families it irritates me because I don’t see what difference it makes to the airline if I carry the bag on or check it. It’s still weight in the plane. I understand when I’m charged a fee for something that costs money. Like getting charged $2 for a paper statement when they have an online version available. It costs money to print and mail a paper statement, I can see why they charge fee. But this… this makes no sense. No extra cost is involved in me checking a bag vs carrying it on.
So I don’t know about you but this fee just rubs me the wrong way. I think it’s a very poor way to go about raising revenues.
June 16th, 2008 at 7:04 am
This is Extremely irritating! We are flying British Airways most of the way but will have one commuter flight using American Eagle…curious if this will effect that flight. Our tix were almost $4K…I will be so angry if I have to pay that mess. Thanks for posting…will be researching on my family’s behalf. I agree with you also by the way…across the board not isolated.
June 16th, 2008 at 10:16 am
This fee is making me very irritated too! Most people who are flying are traveling….which means, yes, they are going to have LUGGAGE. It’s not usually a day trip where luggage isn’t needed, you know? I can see charging for a second bag- maybe. But the first one?? Come on. Thankfully, I am closer to “home” these days and I don’t see any air travel in my near future…
June 16th, 2008 at 10:32 am
I think you make some very good points. Since we have so many children, we have yet to travel all together by plane, but that day is coming I’m sure. With the costs associated with travel of all types these days, I think many people will start opting to stay home.
Thanks for the insightful post.
June 16th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Classic case…It’s always the consumers or the little guys that already don’t have the money who will get hit hard with all these nickle and diming stuff.
June 16th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Ooh, I completely agree! We’ve decided to pretty much quit travelling altogether. Very Special Events only.
June 16th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Another large group of people affected by this will be seamen. I used to work on ships and I would be onboard anywhere from six to twelve months at a time. When you’re signing on for so long, you need to cart around a lot of stuff. I used to carry uniforms, both for day and evening, as well as street clothes. Obviously, by the time you get shoes, underwear, swimsuits, jackets, etc together you have a lot of stuff. Then you have to pack up your hairdryer, curling iron, makeup, toiletries (always have the large containers and backups for when you aren’t any place to buy replacements in a hurry). Then there are the things that make life tolerable - your Bible, CD player and CD’s, hobby type things, a couple decorative items to make your little metal box more homey. At one point I traveled with my sewing machine and supplies. You get the picture. Lots of baggage and when you were returning from workbreak or vacation, the money wasn’t often in abundance. When I went back home on break, I usually had even more luggage, since I had the opportunity to buy some unique items for gifts (and self) at good prices. My, this turned out to be very wordy, but you get the picture. There’s a lot of people out there from all over the world other than those on vacation who have to use air transportation in conjunction with their livelihood.
June 16th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I think it all comes down to fuel prices. Until they come up with a good alternative souce (like sugar ethanol in Brazil) life is just going to get more and more expensive.
June 16th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Pretty smart thinking there. I hope more people read and absorb this.
June 16th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I think it makes sense to charge for the extra weight, even if it sucks. And casual travelers are more likely to get cheap flights, so it evens out for the businessman paying full price but with no luggage.
As a single adult, I have to admit, I’m not super sympathetic. I have to deal with colleagues and other people with kids getting special concessions all the time (and nothing similar for people without kids). So, eventually it all evens out anyway.
Flying used to be expensive. It used to be an experience. We’ve just forgotten about this because everything is so cheap now. But the price has to be paid by someone somewhere….