Air travelers, with some justification, claim they’ve been nickeled-and-dimed to death in recent years. They’ve been assessed additional charges beyond the price of passage on everything from checked bags to purchasing tickets via phone. Their one solace, they thought, was that there was little left on which a carrier could tack on a new fee. Wrong.
Spirit Airlines, a discount carrier that serves mostly leisure travelers in limited markets, announced Tuesday that it would implement a fee of up to $45 for carry-on baggage beginning Aug. 1. Passengers, the airline announcement said, still will be allowed to carry on a “personal item” like a purse or laptop computer for free, but only if it can be stored under a seat. Spirit is the first airline to propose such a charge. Aviation consultants ay it might not be the last.
That’s what concerns air travelers. Fees have a way of migrating from one airline to another. Spirit, in fact, was the first to charge a fee for checked baggage. Initially, larger carriers, the so-called legacy airlines, balked. They relented and followed suit, though, when Spirit continued to attract passengers despite the additional charge. Nowadays, fees for checked baggage, which contribute positively to the airlines’ bottom line, are commonplace, though still a topic of heated discussion and, in a few instances, humor.
Most airlines now charge a checked bag fee, but a couple do not. JetBlue allows passengers to check one bag on its domestic flights and Southwest allows two, a point the latter hammered home in a bevy of TV commercials aired during the just-concluded NCAA basketball championships.
Spirit spokesmen tried to put a positive spin on what could prove to be a public relations problem. Customers who pay the fee, one said, will get to board the plane earlier. That’s nice, but one is left to wonder if fee for that privilege — Spirit will charge $45 for a carry-on if paid t the gate and $30 if the fee is paid in advance — is worth that perk.