This is question everyone seems to ask themselves every so often. It borders on those existential questions like, “Who am I?” or “Why and I here?” Right now, when it comes to changing the way that airline tickets are sold here in the United States, you can make a difference. Sign our petition to the Secretary of Transportation and let him know you would like to know airline fees up front so you can buy your airfare intelligently.
Passengers begin complaining when they hit the first fee — the telephone reservation fee. They howl when hearing that reserved seats will cost extra. Passengers complain when they check in and have to pay baggage fees. Then they complain when then go through a list of fees for bigger seats, standby flights, upgrades, extra frequent flier miles. They grumble again when they have to pay a fee for a blanket and pillow. They mutter while waiting, and waiting, and waiting for their luggage for which they paid a hefty fee, only to wait.
It is time to take a small action that together with others can make a giant difference.
We’re not going to make these fees go away unless we stop paying them. Fat chance that is going to happen. The next best thing, and the basic free-market effort to work on is to at least get these airline fees published at the same time as airfares are published.
Sign our petition at madashellabouthiddenfees.com and tell your friends to do the same. If we show up with tens of thousands of signatories, DOT will hear you.
The Department of Transportation is working on a series of new rules, regulations and guidelines for the travel industry to help protect the travel consumer. The part dealing with airline fees needs the public’s help. This petition addresses all those hidden fees that airlines tack on after the purchase, some not revealed until you get to the airport to travel.
No one likes surprises at the airport, especially surprises that may cost us lots of unexpected money. The DOT this fall is examining hidden airline fees and is considering a requirement that airlines disclose those fees up front everywhere consumers buy airline tickets.
The Consumer Travel Alliance strongly supports this goal, and is providing travelers with an opportunity to have their voices heard in Washington. September 23 is the last day DOT is accepting public comments on this issue and we have designated the occasion Mad As Hell Day! We will deliver our petition to Secretary LaHood that day and hold a press conference at DOT headquarters.
On Monday the Consumer Travel Alliance is delivering a letter to the Secretary urging airline fee transparency signed by consumer leaders from across the country and from Europe.
By virtually banding together, we have a chance to make a change. Plus, timing is everything in this town. It has been more than a decade since the DOT has looked at changing the regulations governing how airline tickets are sold. This is momentus.
Join us. Together we may not be able to eliminate airline fees, but we can get the airlines to tell the full price of the air transportation we are buying.
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.
Which fees do you consider “hidden”? I know about all of these fees, and they have been publicized. Most aren’t upfront charges at all, but choices a person can make after buying a seat, or can simply decline to make. Some are simply charges for services of value to some people but not others. Some are simply a matter of paying more for a seat or boarding priority that matters to some people and not to others. Your thesis seems to be that because people howl, complain and grumble and mutter a lot (your choice of words), government needs to intervene. The only place the government needs to intervene is if and when a fee is unavoidable, in which case it must be part of the price, or if it is truly undisclosed, in which case disclosure must be mandatory.
My thesis is that the airlines have every right to make money and set fares and fees as they see fit. But they have no right to try to hide those prices from their customers.
Everything you say is true. People have choices. When the airlines choose to offer those choices, they should clearly tell consumers how much they will cost.
If the airline are selling any option, they should tag it with a price. That way we can compare prices for the service consumers want between Chicago and Orlando with, let’s say, one checked bag and a reserved seat. Today, that information can only be found by going through the booking process on every airline serving that route. I don’t believe there is a single large airline that will tell you the cost of a particular seat on their website unless the passenger goes through part of the the buying process that includes giving the airline your name, gender, birthdate and email address. Plus, airlines refuse to share their fees, any of them, with travel agents. That means more than 50 percent of the public buying airline tickets must purchase without being told the possible full cost of their ticket.
There is no way for consumers to make apples-to-apples comparisons of flights between Point A and Point B should they need to pay any of the ancillary fees unless they do it manually by comparing airline site against airline site. Just between DC and Orlando there are 7 airlines serving the route with at least 20 different variations of baggage fees and even more variations of priority seats. That means at least 2,800 possible combinations of fees that a consumer would have to calculate in order to compare prices. And I haven’t even begun to deal with the different fees that are now distance calculated.
When we go into a grocery story, no one makes us buy anything, but there are laws that dictate that the prices must be displayed for every item in the store. We don’t just see shelves and shelves of canned goods and a note telling shoppers that there is a price list at the check-out counter. That is effectively what the airlines are doing.
Do an exercise yourself. Let’s say that you have an airline ticket on American Airlines and you want to make a decision whether you should go on your trip or pay the change fee. Go onto the American Airlines site and find the ticket change information.
I don’t want any government control of their business. I just want the government to mandate that the airlines tell consumers the full price so that consumers can compare prices for the product they want to buy and that consumers can purchase all of the airlines products anywhere the airline decides it want to sell airline tickets.
Interesting that you never posted by response from last week. I guess when you asked for DaveS to prove you wrong, you didn’t want to really see that what you state isn’t on AA.com is actually there.
I support you effort on behalf of the buying public, but do so with correct information.