Note to Airlines: Skip the Passengers, Just Fly the Bags
Absurd as it may seem, it's very possible the airlines are making more money on the persistent and aggressive fees they're charging than on ticket sales.
A report from the Department of Transportation reveals that in 2010, the airlines raked in a whopping 5.7 billion dollars in checked bag and changed flight charges.
And we the flying public keep paying and the airlines keep gouging.
Hotelmarketing.com went so far as to suggest that airline ec
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| From From Kaleel |
Every time an airline adds a fee for a checked bag, visitors to OneBag.com jump. And so does the site's revenue.
With baggage and other fees layering costs to airline tickets, previously mundane questions like how to pack, what to pack, and how can I pack everything I need into one bag, become a mantra for cost-conscious travelers.
Every traveler wants to be a perfect packer, and 3,500 daily visitors to OneBag think they
Judging by the new round of airline fees, probably not much!
Southwest Airlines opted not to charge for carry-ons (other airlines opted out too), but then announced it was doubling the fees it charges unaccompanied kids to fly.
There has always been a fee for “UM’s aka/Unaccompanied Minors, as they’re called in the biz, but Southwest’s jump from $25.00 to $50.00 each way says a lot about the “fee-madness" that has infected airlines everywhere,
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| From NMT Images |
American Airlines (AMR Corp.) already charges for checked bags, priority boarding, booking on the phone, unaccompanied minors, pets and other so-called amenities.
Now the airline, the country’s second largest after Delta, is charging between $19 and $35.00 (depending on the length of flight) for front row coach seats, those handful of rows known as bulkhead seats. These are not exit row seats; they’re the seats located after the wall or
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| From NMT Images |
And the mergers go on.
As Continental and United work toward a seamless merger, today’s news that Southwest Airline will acquire competitor AirTran in effect continues to reduce airline choices for travelers, and continues to hold them hostage to the pricing and fee whims of fewer and fewer airlines.
Southwest, admittedly one of the few airlines not to burden passengers with fees and hidden costs, will pay 1.4 billion in a cash and stock purchase fo
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| From Blogger Pictures |
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| From From Kaleel |
Debut of Inside Trip.Com: Adding Big Value to Airfare Searches
Last week marked the debut of InsideTrip.com, a new breed of airfare meta search engine.
While Kayak and other legacy search engines are perfectly capable of coming up with comparative air fares, the well-laid out, graphics-driven InsideTrip.com takes the search experience to a new level.
It evaluates an airline's itinerary and scores it, assigning it a "Trip Quality" rating based on twelve factors including aircraft a
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| From From Kaleel |
Airlines Add Fees For Summer Travel
When will it end?
Ten to thirty bucks more is what you'll be paying this summer as airlines impose a surcharge for flying on peak travel days... except this summer, all days are "peak flying days," that's 73 of 74 days on most flights from June 10 to August 22.
Farecompare.com reported that the surcharges apply for each-way domestic flights, which means a family of four could pay an additional $250.00 for air travel.
A surcharge, usually around $1
