By rolling back the airline fee disclosure rule, along with the base airfare and taxes, the Trump Administration has harmed air travelers.
This past week, I was having afternoon tea and coffee with fellow residents of my building. Eventually, the discussion turned to travel when one in the group mentioned that he and his wife were going to Aruba. Sadly, I had to tell them about the demise of the airline fee disclosure rule.
It’s the first time they would be flying since the COVID pandemic began. In recent years, all their trips were by car.
After choosing their flights, he said that they were shocked about the luggage and seat fees that dramatically increased their airfare. He purchased the tickets despite the fees because he thought he couldn’t back out of the tickets at that point. He could have backed out at that time.
The Biden Administration made a rule that required airlines to disclose their fees upfront. But the courts sided with the airlines and stopped it.
In April 2024, the DOT made a rule that would have required the airlines to disclose their fees upfront with their fares and taxes. That was put on hold soon thereafter by the courts once the airlines sued to stop upfront fee disclosure.
The fees can add up, particularly for families traveling together. For domestic flights at United Airlines and American Airlines, the first checked bag will cost $40 if you wait to pay it at the airport, but only $35 if you prepay the bag fee. At Southwest and Delta, the first checked bag fee is $35.
At United Airlines, passengers can bring a carry-on bag and a personal item on a flight, unless you’re in Basic Economy. Their carry-ons become checked luggage at the cost of $35 if it’s your only bag. If you also have a checked bag, your carry-on will be your second bag and will incur a higher fee. You’ll be able to bring a personal item in all seat classes aboard. At American, Southwest, and Delta, you can bring a carry-on and a personal item aboard without charge.
Late baggage fee disclosure prevents air travelers from easily comparing airline route bottom line airfares.
The problem with late baggage fee disclosure is that it makes it extremely hard to “shop” for the best air travel pricing. Unless you’re a seasoned air traveler, you likely won’t know that you’ll be charged a bag fee for your checked luggage.
To be certain about the problem, I went to United’s website and went through the procedure of purchasing a ticket.
I entered the airports and dates for my round trip flights. That took me to the page at which I would choose the flight and the cabin for my seats. It turns out that on this page, if you scroll to the bottom of the page, it has a link for “Additional fare details.” If you click there it states, “Additional bag charges may apply.” You have to click on another link to actually see the details. When you arrive at the page, it gives no bag fee details at all. Instead you get the United “Checked bag fee calculator.”
Even when revealing hidden luggage fees, United makes it hard to actually determine what the fee is.
To determine the fee, you need to type in your departure and arrival airports, departure date and your cabin class. None of that information is automatically populated in the form from the information you’ve already typed into the United website. After you click on “View bag charges” it will list the various bag fees that might be assessed, including both the standard and prepaid fees.
Unless you’re a United Airlines regular, if you don’t use the calculator at this point, you won’t know what the bag fees are before choosing your flights. Moreover, if you don’t scroll down to the bottom of the flight/fare page, you won’t even see that there might be a bag fee when flying on United, as the fare prices don’t hint that there might be other charges.
After you click the outbound flight of your choice, it brings you to the return flight choice. Again, if you don’t scroll to the bottom and instead quickly choose a return flight, you still likely won’t see any mention of a bag fee. After you choose your return flight, you’re taken to the Traveler Info page. Once you fill in your personal information, it’s likely that you won’t have seen the baggage fees listed on the page, because they are well below the information that you’re typing, including the “Continue” button that takes you to the next page.
Even when the United Airlines website reveals the hidden luggage fees, it’s hard to see the details to compare fares.
Finally, after you’ve chosen your flights and have already put in your personal information, you’re brought to the page that tells you what fee you’ll pay for your checked luggage. Well, it kind of tells you. What it has are a bunch of bundles and none of them explicitly states what fees are contained in each. It does state that there is a luggage fee, but the amount is still hidden.
The hidden luggage fees on my sample flight on United raised the airfare from $279 to $487.
My base airfare with taxes amounted to $279. I knew that upfront from the United website. I chose the bundle for each flight that included both Economy Plus seating for more legroom and to pay the checked luggage fee up front. They were $104 for each flight or $208, a 75 percent increase in the cost of my ticket. I only knew how much the seat upgrade was because I extensively researched it. It’s my opinion that hiding the baggage fee is a strategic sales decision by United. Now I got to choose my seats. At this point, I found out that choosing my seats had no cost for them. I stopped there because it was time to pay.
If I was trying to compare fares with another airline, I would have had to spend 20 minutes each going through to this point at United and every other airline I was considering. By strategically making it so time consuming and hard to find out the full cost of flying on United, I think that it’s obvious that United is trying to stop air travelers from looking elsewhere by making it so hard to get their basic price. At every other major U.S. airline, the fare/fee story is pretty much the same.
To my mind, it isn’t fair and it’s anticompetitive.
The Trump Administration needs to start to protect air travelers, not the airlines reaping in all these fees.
The courts put a hold on the new rules. The Trump Administration, along with compensation for disrupted flights within airline control and protections for damaged wheelchairs of disabled air travelers, rolled back transparent airfares. The Trump Administration has harmed air travel consumers. It is hard to know how much air travelers will pay for their tickets by eliminating comparison shopping. It’s time for the Trump Administration to back the people traveling by air rather than the huge airline corporations.
(Image: Southwest Airlines B737 landing at Philadelphia International Airport. Copyright © 2018 NSL Photography. All Rights Reserved.)
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After many years working in corporate America as a chemical engineer, executive and eventually CFO of a multinational manufacturer, Ned founded a tech consulting company and later restarted NSL Photography, his photography business. Before entering the corporate world, Ned worked as a Public Health Engineer for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. As a well known corporate, travel and wildlife photographer, Ned travels the world writing about travel and photography, as well as running photography workshops, seminars and photowalks. Visit Ned’s Photography Blog and Galleries.
