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Airlines Get Billions From Unbundled Services
Hugh Pickens writes "In hearings before Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that airlines reported revenue of $7.9 billion from baggage fees and reservation change and cancellation fees in calendar years 2008 and 2009 — fees on unbundled services that once were considered part of the ticket price. 'We believe that the proliferation of these fees and the manner in which they are presented to the traveling public can be confusing and in some cases misleading,' says Robert Rivkin, the Department of Transportation's general counsel. Published fares used by consumers to choose flights don't 'clearly represent the cost of travel when these services are added.' However, Spirit Airlines President and CEO Ben Baldanza defended the practice of unbundling, saying it allows his airline to charge lower fares (PDF) and allows the customers the choice to purchase the services or not."
Well on the rare occasion you take the two week Euro-trip it would at least be nice to know that there's going to be a 20% markup on the ticket when you book.
It's not about the cost, it's about the disclosure.
This is what really pisses me off; people take this attitude that, hey..I don't have extra bags, I don't want the food, so I am flying cheaper! Well guess what stupid, you're not flying cheaper.
I travel very often so I have a fair idea of how the traveling costs trend and what I notice is that I get fucked harder and harder by the airlines, but since there is price fixing, there's not a damn thing I can do about it.
Don't get me wrong, if the tickets WERE actually cheaper by not including the bags, than I would be fine with that. BUT, they are not cheaper. If anything, they are more expensive AND you pay your extra 100 bucks for bags. WTF?
You want to go by weight? I weight 160lbs and my wife is 105lbs. Why should she pay the same like me? Why can't she have an extra bag?
Why can that fat as fuck American sitting next to me get the same price?
They should chance the whole thing to per lbs, yourself and bags included. That is whats fair.
One of which is the excessive amount of carry-on baggage that people now bring on to planes. Instead of checking that larger bag and only bringing the laptop case/bookbag/etc on the plane, everyone tries to cram as much stuff as they can in their two carry-on bags so they don't have to pay baggage fees. On the airlines on which I have traveled they tend not to enforce the carry-on restrictions tightly, so many people bring oversized bags which monopolize the limited space available. As a result, you pretty much have to hover by the entry area on the concourse and rush on to the plane to ensure that you will be able to find a place for your single bag. Moreover, this rush for space creates a lot of tension between passengers. On planes with limited carry-on space I have seen arguments break out between patrons over the bag placement. It's distinctly unpleasant to be crammed into an aluminum tube while two people trade insults over space for their laptop case.
With our brilliant free market capitalism in place, a competitor should be here to the rescue to innovate and beat the crap out of these guys who don't take care of their customers. For we have a choice, and that makes our way of life the envy of everyone.
Any minute now. Any minute!!!
I am also waiting for a better cable company, better internet service, a better bank, and oh, a better PC...
Any minute now!!!
You are completely missing the point. Companies are not being honest, that is the problem. With your self-sufficient attitude, you may as well go to the place walking. But your approach is selfish. Maybe one day your grandma or your pregnant wife would not be able to handle her luggage by themselves, or will need to eat something at the plane, and they will be taken advantage of. Of, course, you will not have a problem with that, would you, big guy?
If the fees they charge for these services are in line with the cost of providing them, then no, I don't have a problem with that. TANSTAAFL. OTOH, if they're overcharging for them in order to subsidize a cheaper price on the ticket than it should be, then yes, it's a problem.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Why does the government care? They now get a lower tax revenue! Before, if your ticket cost $500, they got whatever percent (let's say 10), so $50. Now if they strip down the ticket so that it's only $400, plus $100 in other fees, the government is losing $10 they would've previously received. Food, baggage, seat placement, etc, all get taxed at a lower (or non-existent) rate when they're sold separately.
With our brilliant free market capitalism in place, a competitor should be here to the rescue to innovate and beat the crap out of these guys who don't take care of their customers.
There is, Southwest Airlines. No bag fees (a fact which is heavily advertised).
The thing people like you don't realize is that capitalism is not an instant fix, but it does fix things in the long run - Southwest has been very popular and is expanding to more cities and locations. I can take that airline to a lot more places in the U.S. than I used to be able to, in part because of better customer service that made sure I would fly Southwest unless there was no other choice.
How is that not capitalism in action?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't understand people when they complain about companies making profit.
We complain about companies making profit when *at the same time* they're whining to the government about how they are in fact not making any profit because of circumstances A, B and C and therefore need to be allowed to screw over their customers through methods X, Y and Z without getting any hassle over it.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Oh, I dunno. I can have as much luggage as will fit into my trunk, or, if going overseas, into my passenger ship cabin.
I'm sorry, but when the airline industry decided that instead of actually solving the problem (completely isolating the pilots from the passengers, thereby completely eliminating the possibility of using the aircraft itself as a precisely directed weapon) they were going to permanently oscillate on the knife-edge between screaming paranoia on the one hand, and utter moral cowardice on the other, they lost my family and myself as customers.
But ships, and cars, remain quite lovely travel options. No homeland insecurity personnel pretending to be useful, no unreasonable limits on what you may transport, and both types of travel are competitive, financially speaking.
Also... cruise ships and passenger ships are still committed to making your journey pleasant, even entertaining. Given the extra time they have to work with, they can go beyond dressing the service people attractively (which the airlines have given up on) and simply picking attractive service people (which the airlines have also given up on)... there are shows, gambling, fine meals, pools, rock wall climbing, many other things.
Of course, if you can drive yourself somewhere instead of flying, you can add as many recreational activities as you like -- you're the cruise director, as it were. Everything from fine meals to strip clubs to side trips to the nearest museum or art showroom.
As opposed to being scanned, searched, checked for listing with various intrusive (and massively unconstitutional) agencies, forced to wait in long lines, having your toiletries and snow-globes confiscated, shoehorned into seating that was apparently designed by a one-armed/one-legged midget engineer with no objection whatsoever to the idea of the person in front of you reclining right into your crotch, eventually being fed government-surplus nuts (only on luxury flights, though) and diet soda by a transvestite in a hideous pantsuit for about the same cost as a fine meal on a ship.
Last year, on my trip to the east coast, I took a side trip through Crater of Diamonds State Park and took home a sweet little trophy -- a blue-white -- which sits in my mineral collection today. Got where I was going on time, did my business, and drove back the long way around, took lots of photos, etc.
Airlines. Man, I'd have to be *so* short of time to sink that low ever again. Or they'd have to roll themselves back to the 60's in terms of service, and then step it up. Difficult to imagine either way.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Well, for what it's worth, I'm an airline pilot.
:-/). And those finely tuned revenue models all say the same thing - people buy for the sticker price, and expect fees to be added in anyway. If you include those fees in the 'sticker price', your seat will bring in less revenue as most people order flights between A and B by sticker price, and sticker price alone. Consider it a fact.
And when I commute between DC and NYC, I drive. Everything you say is true - it bothers me a lot that the industry has sunk so low, and it bothers a lot of other pilots too.
Unfortunately, our ideas don't count for much, and the reality is that the huge majority of paying people pick how to get from A to B on the basis of price alone. The amount of resources airlines bring to 'revenue management' (a fancy way of saying figuring out how much to charge for a seat) is rather amazing; they have models that adjust the value a seat will bring in based on time to departure, and they are constanly refining their models, to the point where they can predict their revenue from a given flight within +-1% pretty consistenly desipte cancellations, rasing, lowering, then rasing the price of the seat (Costs? Not so much
Several airlines have tried the idea of 'all first class' - establish a brand specifically known for its top notch service, and deliver it. They have all failed in recent years, Midwest being one of the last. It seems that there are not enough people willing to pay for superior service to make a go of it as a scheduled airline. The non-scheduled operators, who charge an order of magnitude more (see Netjets et al.), on the other hand, apparently take superior service with absolute seriousness, and deliver it well - they are growing relatively robustly to fill the gap between dedicated corporate/celebrity bizjets and the becoming Greyhound scheduled operators.
I actually wish more people would think and do as you, so it was economic to run a quality airline, even if it was smaller in size. When enough people demand something, the market sometimes delivers. Enjoy your travels!