The airlines in America have set upon a course of purposely confusing passengers with hidden fees, arcane frequent flier exceptions to these fees and new bundling of airline fees. Their stated goal is to keep the airfares as low as possible in order to remain on the first pages of travel website displays and appear as the best value.
However, when hidden fees are added in at the end of the process, the published airfares are nothing more than a cruel and costly bait and switch tactic. This is not anything that I have brilliantly deciphered over the years, but exactly what the airlines have confessed to doing. Airline fee complexity makes comparing prices more difficult than ever.
My big question — Why is the Department of Transportation letting them get away with this duplicitous tactic?
Airline executives and marketing gurus are honest about wanting to display the lowest possible airfare across all online and computer reservation systems. Their point of view is that clicks on flights appearing more than one or two pages in a search for best airfares are rare.
In order to keep an airline’s listings high in the display of an aggregating site such as kayak.com and mobissimo.com and in more traditional online travel agencies such as expedia, travelocity, orbitz and priceline, airlines consciously work to keep airfares as inexpensive as possible. Airlines to date have declined to even inform these aggregators and online travel agents of the cost of ancillary fees such as seat reservations, extra legroom, exit-row seats, baggage, etc.
Even the travel agent on the corner is kept in the dark about airline fees. Passengers who want to explore airline fees must go to airline sites and search for various fees or discover them by surprise on the phone and at the airport when attempting to check in or make a change to a ticket.
All airline propaganda aside, fees are not clearly displayed even on airline websites. I defy anyone to figure out the change fees associated with various airline tickets on American Airlines’ aa.com. I cannot find that information nor can specialists such as Christopher Muise, one of the founders of truprice.com, who searches for airline fees every day.
TruPrice.net has not been able to establish that AA publishes a $150 change fee. Just the opposite. Of the 17 major US carriers, AA is the only airline whose ticket change fee, according to their own language, varies depending on several factors.
Directly from AA.com: Change fees/penalties may vary by markets and fare basis types. Change fees/penalties are published in conjunction with each fare basis. If several different fares are used to construct an itinerary, it is feasible that each leg of travel may have a different change fee/penalty. Further from AA.com: Change Fee Travel within/Between 50 U.S./Puerto Rico/U.S. Virgin Islands, And Transborder U.S./Canada or, to/from Hawaii. Check Fare Rules. Change Fees Vary. Once a ticket has been reissued, the new issue date will determine the change fee amount.
The only reference I could find anywhere on AA about the $150 change fee is: Travelers can save $75 off the regular $150 charge (when applicable) when a change is made to a ticketed reservation. While AA may indeed impose a strict $150 change fee, I have been unable to pinpoint where it is distinctly identified.
Every other carrier in the US has specific language on change fees that can be found on truprice.net. We have been unable to publish a specific fee for AA because of the language above.
Truprice.net is one of the few sites where consumers can go to search for airline fees, however, even they offer no guarantee that their fees are accurate and all warn that the airlines can change these fees at any time. Plus, many fees can only be paid through the airline websites.
The airline claim that they are maintaining their marketing prerogatives. They argue that any business is allowed to market its product as it sees fit. By unbundling airfares into different fees and then by reassembling these fees into new consumer fee packages, the airlines bluster that they are providing customers more choice and an opportunity to save money on portions of the airline product that they do not use.
My question to the airlines: If these fees are such a gift to passengers and if they save the average passenger lots of money, why do the airlines continue to hide these fees and make it difficult to compare the total cost of travel?
I would hope if the airlines honestly believe that airline fees are about providing the flying public the services they want at a fair price, they will join us in urging DOT to mandate full disclosure of airline fees and work proactively with travel agents and GDSs to make all fees transparent and allow transactions for these fees to be made at any place that sells airfares.
Passengers who want to comment on the pending DOT rulemaking that aims to mandate airlines reveal all fees so that consumers can compare the total cost of travel should go to regulationroom.org and add their comments to this site created through a public/private partnership between DOT and Cornell University. These comments will be collected and consolidated for entry into the regulation.gov docket.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
There are several incorrect statements in this article.
First: Travel Agencies have access to fees for the various carriers. We also have special phone numbers we can use to get questions answered that you don’t have access to.
Second: Every fare every airline publishes has rules. The rules vary from fare to fare, nothing is consistant. You have to read the rules and I admit they are not a fun read.
Third: AA has a fare rules link when you price an itinerary. Here is what I just found when pricing SFO to JFK rt at AA.com:
Not Applicable CANCELLATIONS TICKET IS NON-REFUNDABLE. NOTE – TICKET HAS NO VALUE UNLESS PASSENGER CANCELS TICKETED FLIGHT RESERVATIONS PRIOR TO TICKETED DEPARTURE TIME. CHANGES CHARGE USD 150.00 FOR REISSUE.
The fees are not for consumer convenience. They are there to make the airline money. Plain and simple. Anything else is just marketing hype to make the fees sound palatable. How could it possibly be to the passenger’s benefit to charge $150 to change the ticket, or charge $50 RT to carry your suitcase?
In cases where the fees are difficult or impossible to find, why can’t the comparison/booking websites merely insert the fees they believe are applicable, with an “(est.)” after them? In that way the consumer can at least make a reasonable guess at what the total cost will be, and if the airline doesn’t like that, it can make the fees more accessible.
It seems to me there are dozens of possible fees that may depend on the plane, the flight, the airline, the destination, and particularly, the passenger. How could any listing try to incorporate them all? Really to me, most of those optional fees are of no interest. I ignore them and don’t want them included in the price charged or the price listed. I seldom choose to check luggage, and when I do, I pay the relevant fee without complaining, realizing that it’s something I usually don’t have to pay for. Stuff like “extra legroom” is totally optional – extra value for extra pay. Why shouldn’t the best seats cost more? I certainly expect to pay more for a better seat at a game or a concert.
I despise stuff like a “fuel surcharge” which is unavoidable and should be required to be listed in the base fare every time.
@DaveS
You are exactly right. There are too many fees. Your solution is to avoid them, but there are other considerations. Depending on your FF mile status you may choose one airline over another because of cost associated with baggage, reservations, etc. Depending on the credit card you have in your pocket, Delta may be less expensive than Continental etc.
If the airlines file their fees at the same time that they file airfares, enterprising websites and travel agents will begin to develop interfaces that will make the hundreds of fees understandable and find ways to allow consumers to compare the total cost of travel.
Charlie, there are charts available on line for a lot of this and fees don’t change daily as airfares do. I understand the frustration you feel, but geez, you are making a mountain out of a mole hill, over and over again on this.
If you don’t know where to look, call your local travel agency. They will be hapy to assist you. Just like building a house. Contractors know more than you on where to get all the correct information on permits, items for your project and experts to use for certain work.
Making any purchase is a risk and making on line doesn’t make it any easier even though you might think it should.
Dear Bodega,
Please don’t sound so condescending.
I am working very closely with Amadeus, TravelPort and Sabre as well as with NBTA and ASTA. They are all on board with me.
We all see a big problem with the system as it is, with no transparency and not transaction or tracking capabilities for airline fees. All of these organizations that support you see a major mountain, not a molehill. DOT sees a problem. The Senate Commerce Committee sees a problem. The House Transportation Committee sees a problem. I, together with all of the companies, associations and Congressional committees are working hard to make your life as a travel agent better, give you fee information and to give you more control over the tickets you sell to your customers. We are all working to allow consumers to compare the final cost of travel before purchasing their airline tickets.
Between now and September 23rd, when the comment period ends for the DOT proposed rulemaking that will hopefully making airline fees fully transparent, you will be inundated with airline fee content. I hope it comes from CBS, NBC, ABC, FOXNews, Travel Weekly, USAToday, AP, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and your local newspaper. That means I am doing my job effectively. The Consumer Travel Alliance is organizing surveys. It is enlisting hundreds of other consumer organizations. I am appearing on TV and Radio. We are collecting names for a major petition to be delivered to the Secretary of Transportation asking for fee transparency. All in the name of airline fee transparency so that consumers (and travel agents) can compare the total cost of travel.
Ready or not, here we come.
Fees are a pain and I am happy to see organizations working for the flying public. But you have several simiilar columns on the same thing. We get it, so if you think that is condescening, that isn’t what it is. It is letting you know we have heard you and Chris over and over again.
I think DCTA and I both know about fees, where to find them and how to advise our clients. That is my point. We aren’t in the dark like you want your readers to believe, or so is my take on your posts. For those who shop on line, this is where we differ. If you don’t know what you are doing, go to a professional.
I would like there to be no fees, just put in in the fare and if as a passenger I don’t check luggage or request seats with more leg room then the carrier will have made money. But the honestly, the internet has caused this proliferaton of fees. People want rock bottom prices and shop a ticket to death. So the unbundling of fares is what has happened and it is a PITA. Change fees started well before the internet was around, and those were because people flake out….on just about everything these days.