Airlines Take American Travelers to the Cleaners for Thanksgiving

Today is the big getaway day, the day before Thanksgiving. For our non-American readers, this is the biggest travel day in the US, when everyone dashes off to see family and friends for a Christmas celebration without the presents and the sanctimonious "Happy Holidays." To help celebrate, America's airlines are serving up surcharges as well as the usual lousy service, late arrivals and jam-packed aircraft. The nickel-and-diming of the American traveler continues unabated.

According to Mary Schlangenstein and Mary Jane Credeur writing for Bloomberg, "Passengers checking bags this week will pay as much as $25 for the first one and $30 for the second, $5 more than in 2008. Paying in person rather than online may cost $5 more . . . Reserving certain seats will cost as much as $30 on some carriers, and snacks or meals will be $3 to $10. There are fees for Wi-Fi access and, in some cases, entertainment such as movies or television. The charges could add $100 a person on round-trip flights." Baggage charges in the second quarter alone reached over $660 million according to the US Department of Transportation.

Naturally, the airlines say they need the revenue to make up for the miserable revenues they pulled in during 2008. Things were so bad then that they instituted a fuel surcharge to make up for the fact that jet fuel was going through the roof. Of course, crude is trading at about half what it was sixteen months ago, and jet fuel has fallen as well. Yet if a single airline has withdrawn its fuel surcharge, the news has yet to reach this journal.

The ladies from Bloomberg caught up with George Hamlin, president of Hamlin Transportation Consulting in Fairfax, Virginia. He told them, "Virtually all of them [US-based carriers] should make money. The number of seats sold will be very high, fares are not at their lowest, and fuel is not exorbitant." This would not offend if they provided value for money or simply treated their passengers like grown-ups. The surcharges alone tell one what they think of their customers.

Rather than raise the fares, almost every airline keeps its fare as low as possible so that travel sites show only best-case scenarios. The Bloomberg report notes, "Airlines have said they lack the power to raise fares amid a 17-month slump in US air traffic as consumers compare prices on the Web. Instead, carriers have focused on tacking on fees that kick in after passengers have booked their travel." In other words, they lie about their prices. They figure the hearth and home feelings of the traveling public will allow them to get away with it.

Somewhere out there is an ambitious US attorney or perhaps a district attorney, someone with an eye on a seat in Congress or a governor's mansion. Taking these shady practices out of the picture would win millions of votes. One has no objection to a profitable air sector. One objects passionately to deceitful trading and fraud. Air piracy used to mean hijacking, but no more. Now, it refers to the usual business practices of the airlines.

© Copyright 2009 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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