Airline Fees on the Rise – Study by TravelNerd

CFOs across various businesses are increasingly paying more and more attention to the rising airline fees. Amadeus and Ideaworks estimate 2012 worldwide airline fee revenue at $36.1 billion which is estimated to be a 11% increase over 2011! TravelNerd put together a report and found that U.S. airlines changed more than 50 different fees since January 2012, in some cases fairly large changes. Here is a quick summary of the analysis by them –

• 36 out of the 52 fee changes are direct fee increases, with the remaining changes predominantly a result of:
  • Bundling / unbundling of fees (e.g. instituting 1 fee for priority boarding and seating or instituting 2 separate fees for priority boarding and seating that were previously bundled into 1 fee)
  • Increasing fee price ranges (e.g. Spirit changed its premium seat fees from $25-$75 to $12-$199)
  • Redefining fee policies (e.g. Allegiant kept the same fee price of $50 for overweight bags 51-70 pounds but changed the fee policy to apply for bags 41-70 pounds)
• 28 out of the 52 fee changes are related to baggage fees, 19 changes are related to service fees, and 5 changes are related to in-flight fees
• Despite Spirit’s infamous $100 per carry-on bag fee, the majority of fee increases were within $5-$10
• 18 out the 52 fee changes are attributed to Spirit Airlines and Allegiant Air, ultra low cost carriers (ULCCs) notorious for charging fees
• Lastly, a small ray of hope comes from United Airlines, who reduced its overweight bag fees from $200 to $100 for bags 51-70 pounds and from $400 to $200 for bags 71-100 pounds

For the full report, see the original article here. (Thank you TravelNerd for this research!)