The Travel Detective on Spirit Air & Ancillary Fee Madness
I’m angry.
Its one thing for airlines to say they’re making money on ancillary fees, but its getting out of control. Airlines are making billions of dollars in checked bags fees, ticket change fees, pillow and blanket charges, and food. However, the airline lobby is trying to tell me that when you actually analyze airline ticket fares, the ticket costs 20 percent today less than it did 15 years ago.
Well, the official ticket cost is less, especially when you consider the airlines that some airlines charge $9 a ticket. But by the time you finish paying for the ticket its $400. Your officially published ticket prices are lower than they were 15 years ago, but not when you consider ancillary fees. And airlines are making more money with ancillary fees than they’re making operating the airline.
There’s something wrong with that. For something really wrong, lets talk about our friends at Spirit Airlines. I like to say that Spirit should change their advertising motto to “We’re not happy until you’re not happy.”
Spirit has one of the sneakiest fees in the industry that goes against common sense. Most airlines want you to book online, but not Spirit. Spirit will charge you up to $34 in fees if you want to buy your tickets online. If you want to avoid that, you need to go to the airport and stand on line at the counter. When you actually do the math, their booking fee could be 40 percent more than the ticket’s total price. So sure ticket prices are less than they were 15 years ago because we are now adding everything on after the fact.
Most fees are optional. You don’t have to eat the food (why would you?), you don’t have to have the pillow, you don’t have to have the blanket, you don’t have to have a preferential seat, you don’t have to board early. But, you do have to check or carry on a bag.
With most airlines, a smart traveler knows that you can sneak your bag through security and just check it at the gate when they have no more room left on the plane. So, everybody is now going through those security checkpoints with everything short of their dead grandmother and a stuffed moose and getting it on the plane.
Airline Tickets At Low Fares - News
Your officially published ticket prices are lower than they were 15 years ago, but not when you consider ancillary fees. And airlines are making more money with ancillary fees than they're making operating the airline. There's something wrong with that
For online travel sites that offer consumers travel choices based on ticket price, the two opposing fare philosophies have made life more complicated. A number have opted to incorporate airline fares that have been adjusted to reflect all costs.
Robert Menendez is calling on Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to mandate an advance listing of all fees that go into airline ticket prices, and to bar any fee increases once the sale is made. "You shouldn't have to be a rocket scientist to have to
Daniel Inouye says the Kalaupapa community has been unfairly burdened with rising ticket prices, infrequent flights, and inadequate services for residents with disabilities. He says patients may now travel to Honolulu for medical care without spending
American wants to provide information about flights directly to travel agents and cut out the middleman in many cases. The outcome could change the way airline tickets are sold to business travelers, who are more likely than vacationers to use a travel
Coca Traveling & Vacations » Blog Archive » Low-cost Air Tickets ...
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