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Comment by monksy | Hacker News Reader

The airlines are awfully upset with the US law that forces them to show the full cost of the flight. They really want to show that they're the cheapest airline without being the cheapest.

A few things they've done:

1. They've created baggage fees for checking bags: That accounts for +$50

2. The YQ/Fuel charge: You're subject on their pricing of fuel

3. Seat Charges: If you want to reserve a seat before checking, some airlines charge for this (Namely AA)

4. Fees for printing a BP (Ryan Air), checking in at the airport (Ryan Air again), Carry on luggage (Spirit), etc

5. Charging for alcohol on long haul flights (I'm rather fine with it.. but it used to be customary)

6. Charging for food on long haul flights. (I'm looking at you US Airways CLT-AUR)

View on HN

But many, if not most, of those things are things I would prefer to not pay for, and I would prefer that my seat on a given flight not subsidize the overpacking drunken Luddite who hits all those items in one swoop. The cost for an airline to serve me vs serving that high needs customer is very different, why should I pay for the extra service without seeing the benefit?

Once they have sold you the ticket though they are free to extort you e.g. on meals. Sure you could BYO for the 14 hr flight but ... yuk!

I've not seen such a long flight where meals are paid. Once you reach that timescale, food becomes non-optional. I have had 14 hour flights where the food was so bad that it wasn't even worth getting it for free, so it can still go wrong that way.

Norwegian Air does not serve free food on transcontinental flights. Fine by me, I'm comfortable surviving 12 hours without eating hot food, in fact I do it almost every day.

I guess you are Norwegian. Smörgåslunch?

Not getting Norwegian food is a service.

Melbourne to Singapore recently was 7+h with no included food, only dubious snacks Easyjet-style. And in contradiction to another comment here, the email confirming my booking explicitly stated that no outside food and drink was allowed on-board. It's anyone's guess how,well that's enforced, but on first evaluation, if that's not extortion, I don't know what is.

Seven hours with no included food would be OK in my view. I'd start to draw the line around 10 hours. Really, as long as they're up-front about it (both the fact that there's no free food, and what they sell and the prices), I'd be OK regardless.

However, banning outside food and drink is ridiculous. I'd get right on ignoring that, and if they were somehow able to enforce it, I'd stop traveling with them.

The 5 hour flight of Charlotte to Aurba (US Airways) was a pay for lunch deal. Shame for an international flight.

Many airlines do not consider Central America or Caribbean to be actual international flights from North America.

You can usually tell in whether they offer a true business class cabin or just a first class cabin like other domestic flights. :/

I do not understand this. Do other means of transport provide free food? I have traveled cross-country in Greyhound. Never got free food. What is that about airline travel that people want cheap, and still want luxury?

Greyhounds usually at least stop for food. Airplanes cannot.

Greyhound takes 8 hours to go from LA to San Francisco. What choice do they have?

I've been on 13-hour transatlantic flights. They've never once stopped so I could get lunch.

Weirdly, the low-cost long-distance bus service in the UK has an option for food, drink, more reliably available wifi and better seating at not much more in cost if you're clever about it, in the form of Megabus/Citylink Gold. Its higher-cost competitor, National Express, stops at service stations on certain routes and provides vouchers for the cafes/restaurants there. (They also often make stops at large bus stations for upwards of quarter of an hour, allowing people to get food from surrounding shops.) And at times, you can get first class on the trains at less additional cost than the wifi would cost - with comfier seating, free wifi, multiple meals, and free alcohol.

I have a suspicion the issue isn't really the lack of service, it's that either you get nickle and dimed or the next step up is an order of magnitude higher in price.

Long distance buses in South America provide complimentary meals and tea/coffee.

The irony is airlines included free food to get people on board.

I was provided free food on my train ride from London to Brussels, and on my train from Brussels to Amsterdam.

> I was provided free food on my train ride from London to Brussels

Which class were you in? IIRC they only give free food in the upper classes, not the basic one.

Fair enough, I was in business class and first class respectively.

It's about managing a literal sardine can full of people for half a day.

Also, any 14 hour flight will offer 2 meals and refreshments. The main concern from takeoff to landing is keeping people calm

So instead of bundling into your ticket price the cost of food you may not want or like, they allow people who bring their own to save money, and only charge those who consume that particular good. Apparently this is "extortion", somehow? Nonsense.

liquids are, since you cannot bring anything through security checkin. and if you don't drink a single drop on that 14h flight, well you are an exception

Then buy a drink and pack your own food. In any case, it's hardly the airlines' fault that liquids can't come through security. I just do not see what is so bad about unbundling food from ticket price.

If everyone would start bringing their own food that would lead to a huge mess of transporting, storing, unpacking, preparing and disposing of food in all sorts of random ways at various times throughout the flight by the hundreds of hungry sleep deprived passengers. Airports would be even less efficient going through security, vendors trying to sell food to go and people congregating to buy things. There's really enough general unbundling of comfort and efficiency at airports already. I would definitely pay more if even more things was standardized and included for everyone on the flight (like luggage, security, airport seating).

Or, people could suck it up and not eat for an hour or two. Sure on longer flights a meal is welcome, but even missing a meal should not be a terrible burden.

No one is complaining about not getting food on a 1-2 hour flight.

Many of us routinely take plane flights that are longer than two hours. A cross country flight is 5-6 hours plus 2 hours at the airport before and often a half hour after to get checked baggage. That's an 8-hour day.

Sitting on a cramped airplane for 5-6 hours is pretty unpleasant already. Doing it hungry doesn't improve the experience.

With 5-6 hours of flight time I'm often lucky if it is only an 8-hour day. I almost never have access to a direct flight cross country, so tack on at least another hour plus taxiing, running to catch a connection, then waiting for the connection to depart. If you let airline algorithms/travel agents select cheapest available flights, the connection is quite possible entirely in the wrong direction, too, adding a bonus hour or two to flight times.

I've had companies crazy enough to ask if they could interview me on a cross-country flight day to save themselves a hotel night (after they were already planning to schedule the cheapest flights they could find), and I can only imagine those people have never traveled cross-country much.

True. I used to have to connect to fly to see my parents. Add two more hours for that.

I can't imagine interviewing the day of a cross-country flight. Even without connecting that would be miserable and probably pointless.

When I fly international, it's more like 10-12 hours. Even assuming I had dinner before I boarded, sleep, and then wake up, I'm going to need some breakfast and a decent cup of coffee.

Then you have an even better incentive to fast, since it has been shown to reduce or eliminate jet lag [0]. I use this protocol on long flights and find it works well, getting me back in action within a day, even after traversing 8 time zones

[0] http://harpers.org/blog/2012/03/the-empty-stomach-fasting-to...

It's not the airlines job to incentivize what some guy on the internet considers healthy habits. I want breakfast after sleeping through the night. Just a bit of fruit, some cottage cheese or yogurt, and some black coffee. Maybe throw out the dairy and give me an egg.

I already pay for that as part of the ticket price. I do not want them unbundled in a way that makes my very necessary breakfast more expensive.

Other people could say "Its not the airlens job to incentivize eating breakfast when so many people don't any more". I'm perfectly happy unbundling wasteful unnecessary gimmicks (from my point of view). And guess what? I win this one!

>Other people could say "Its not the airlens job to incentivize eating breakfast when so many people don't any more".

Except that most people want breakfast after a night's sleep.

Some people. And those people can pay for it thank you.

You still can pay more for the bundled experience by:

1. Flying legacy carriers who are more bundled than low-cost carriers

and/or

2. By purchasing business or first class seats, which often still include all the bundled goodies

I don't generally want to pay for business class, but frequent flyer programs and/or premium economy usually takes care of things like fast track, lounge access and priority boarding. But nothing of that is really special in itself.

What I want is an airline that doesn't undermine their own business by making things better for their passengers, but instead have incentive both to make things better and more efficient. If there's no upsell the airline have to make sure things are efficient and there's less reason to hold back on "goodies".

I know there have been attempts to make such airlines in the past, but maybe with the new smaller long range aircraft, that can go from smaller airports, and more competitive taxi market, for transfer, it could work.

>"huge mess of transporting, storing, unpacking, preparing and disposing of food in all sorts of random ways at various times throughout the flight by the hundreds of hungry sleep deprived passengers."

That's generally handled by having a cart with a garbage bag attached that comes by, and having people opening their food on the small trays provided.

>"Airports would be even less efficient going through security, vendors trying to sell food to go and people congregating to buy things."

Yes. It is called a "post-security food court".

>"I would definitely pay more if even more things was standardized and included for everyone on the flight (like luggage, security, airport seating)."

That's nice for you. A lot of people don't want that, or aren't willing to pay.

> That's generally handled by having a cart with a garbage bag attached that comes by, and having people opening their food on the small trays provided.

Considerable effort has already gone into making food service efficient. One of the few reason I can imagine to unbundle food is to have fewer flight attendants. But now you're suggesting they should service the passengers in a random rather than sequential order, as not everyone would want to eat at the same time. A tray doesn't really solve the problem of the person shaking their protein drink (which hopefully stays in it's container), the person having to grab the third thing from the over head storage nor someone spilling their to go coffee over you. Food service is efficient. It comes in bulk, everyone gets served, everyone eats, everyone throws things away, done.

> Yes. It is called a "post-security food court".

"Amenities" like food courts and shops is a big reason why airports are annoying. If it wasn't for trying to get you to buy overpriced things airport entry would be as efficient as airport exit and not some IKEA style maze.

>"Food service is efficient. It comes in bulk, everyone gets served, everyone eats, everyone throws things away, done."

Great. If an airline finds that it is more efficient that they bundle food with the ticket price, then more power to them. I just don't see why it should be required that they do so.

>""Amenities" like food courts and shops is a big reason why airports are annoying."

I am sorry that you are annoyed by food courts. On the other hand, I suspect that the fact they are usually full of businesses suggests that many people patronize them and find them useful. Again, I'm not sure what the proposed solution is. Prohibit airports from having food courts?

did you ever had guests in your home? did you ever have them full day inside, and didn't give them a single thing to eat the whole time? (ie those magical 14 hours). well of course no, you're not an a__hole, right?

alternative - food stalls in airports serving specific food/packaging for flights. haven't seen a single one in those 30+ airports i ever visited.

Another issue - many foods are outright smelly and many can't stand some smells (ie -> puking) - imagine 300+ people eating their own stuff inside the plane, on 14 hours flight. ever experienced a strong smell of any airline food? thank god or whoever for that.

as for food courts, they are full of 'businesses' since those have that overpriced and usually seriously crappy food paid by employer as part of trip expenses. they have their place in airports, but definitely add chaos and size - why do I need to wade through countless restaurants and boutiques just to get from checkin to gate? that's cheap. they could be in some designated accessible 'shopping area' for example.

But these would efficiency in the airports, and that's usually not the name of the game these days.

>"did you ever had guests in your home? did you ever have them full day inside, and didn't give them a single thing to eat the whole time? (ie those magical 14 hours). well of course no, you're not an a__hole, right?"

An airline is a paid service. I'm not their friend, I'm their customer.

>"alternative - food stalls in airports serving specific food/packaging for flights. haven't seen a single one in those 30+ airports i ever visited." >"why do I need to wade through countless restaurants and boutiques just to get from checkin to gate? that's cheap. they could be in some designated accessible 'shopping area' for example."

Okay, I get it, you don't like the way airports currently are, nor all of their offerings. I still don't see why this requires that A Law Be Made governing what they are and are not allowed to offer.

> alternative - food stalls in airports serving specific food/packaging for flights. haven't seen a single one in those 30+ airports i ever visited.

Maybe it's a US/California thing, but that's pretty common here

> If everyone would start bringing their own food that would lead to a huge mess of transporting, storing, unpacking, preparing and disposing of food in all sorts of random ways at various times throughout the flight by the hundreds of hungry sleep deprived passengers. Airports would be even less efficient going through security, vendors trying to sell food to go and people congregating to buy things.

For any flight over 45 minutes I always bring my own food. It's better than anything I can get on the plane and cheaper too. There's nothing special about going through security as it's in my carry on.

Only catch is you can't bring large liquids (so no thermos full of soup). I suppose you could have a set of 3.5 oz containers you eventually merge into a bowl but that's a little too extreme even for me ...

Fill a water bottle after you get through security.

if you mean in toilet then do it say in delhi and good luck on your flight, hope you have seat next to toilets and no empty plane.

if you mean buy overpriced bottled water then yes, that's an option. but imagine some people want hot herbal tea on that flight, say 1-1.5 litre (ie they are sick). good luck negotiating with some airport 'restaurant' having say 8 tea servings for you (easily costing 20-30 usd/eur together)

Bad example. Delhi airport is actually really nice.

I mean the water bottle filling stations I've seen and used all across the US and Europe.

Someone told me you could bring mini-bottles since they're under the liquid limit. Is that not the case?

It depends on what standards they're using. However, drinks and water fountains are frequently available once you've gone through security anyways.

Long haul flight. Not practical to bring all meals. Buy food or starve. Principle of supply and demand. Lots of demand and one supplier. Low margins on flight and push for corporate profits so supplier needs to rake it in => Food aint gonna be cheap!

If you don't believe me buy a sandwich on a ryanair flight.

Part of me agrees. And I also think flying is really cheap, not expensive like people are saying here.

On the other hand, I do want to point out a couple of things. It's crazy to charge for printing a boarding pass. That does not cost money (to a first approximation). Also, substantially all the airlines that charge to check bags will gate check for free. It's just more hassle. So what's really happening is that your seat IS being subsidized -- by the people who check bags at at checkin rather than at the gate.

This is all classic price discrimination

Yes, but hardly anybody understands price discrimination. Generally, people think that by requiring services and their prices to be bundled, their overall price will be lower. Which is not true of course.

I think mostly people are offended by the waste of having a very complex sales contract - understanding and negotiating terms is a lot of effort for all parties, and may well add up to a higher cost than what's saved through pricing efficiency.

Yes, it might do so. Depends on how expensive the services are and how easy the process is. But what annoys me is the attitude of "I prefer that Service X and Service Y be bundled together, therefore it should be mandatory that they are." Sure, there are arguments for bundling, and for unbundling. I don't see that just because some people prefer one or the other that it should be required.

Well, if we are to be able to sensibly compare prices between airlines without spending our whole lives reading fine print then we really need a "standard bundle" and a law that the advertised price be the price of the standard bundle. And at that point it's natural for people to want the standard bundle to match their own preferred bundle, because that will be the bundle whose price is most tightly optimized.

In the economists' world it shouldn't make any difference - a ticket for $200 plus a $20 option for a checked bag is economically equivalent to a ticket for $220 and a $20 rebate for flying without a bag, and if unbundling is really done for the passengers' sake then it will be equally worthwhile under the latter conditions. But I have a sneaking suspicion that if they had to still advertise the price as $220 then the airlines would suddenly decide it wasn't worth unbundling the checked bag after all.

I just don't think that "seeing what is included in a airline ticket" is all that complicated, or that it is simpler somehow than deciding on, administrating, and enforcing a "standard bundle" on all these different airlines. And there's nothing to say that the standard bundle will necessarily meet that many people's preferences. I mean, people distinguish between different services and goods all the time depending on how much they value them - I don't think they suddenly lose this ability when comparing flights.

> I just don't think that "seeing what is included in a airline ticket" is all that complicated

The airlines are incentivised to make it complicated, and just dealing with n different website layouts is challenging enough. Compare to e.g. food labelling, where we require mass in specific units and nutritional information in a specific format, or cars, which are obliged to include mpg and safety information from particular standardised tests in their advertising.

> And there's nothing to say that the standard bundle will necessarily meet that many people's preferences.

It doesn't have to - the point is just to have a point of comparison to be able to compare equivalent offerings from Airline A and Airline B, even if you end up getting a very different bundle from the standard one.

Well, maybe you could have a price-compare thing, and that seems vaguely reasonable, but what everybody seems to be talking about and demanding is that there be a required bundling of certain services. A mere labelling is quite different.

    > understanding and 
    > negotiating terms

This sounds like a good job for a flight search engine.

That just shifts the cost around, since there's no reason for airlines to cooperate with such a search engine.

    > since there's no reason for
    > airlines to cooperate with
    > such a search engine

...?

What cooperation is needed? These fares are sold under different fare codes, and the meanings of the fare codes are easily available.

Ryan air is happy to charge you for any oversized luggage at the gate. No free luggage for anyone.

They will still check bags most of the time - if the flight is full and everyone has brought a bag with them there won't be enough locker space.

Sure, but they'll only put it in the hold for free if it's a single bag small enough for them to class it as "hand luggage", and it's to improve their boardig efficiency, not to do you a favour.

Try flying with a family of 5, your definition of "cheap" may change a bit.

Just checked for a family: four kids one parent: around $4000 from us to Germany... One way

Sure, but they were giving those to you for free and now they'll be taking them away without decreasing the price. So you're still paying the same for the base fare, it's just nobody gets the "luxuries" anymore.

It's also funny how some of those "luxuries" were originally part of the base service to make everyone's experience better and by removing them, now everyone's experience is worse and costs more. Primarily: checked baggage exists as a system to get baggage out of the cramped main cabin and into simpler, dedicated storage with marginal and reasonably efficient load/unload times. By charging fees for any checked baggage (as opposed to excessive checked baggage as used to be the regime), the airlines incentivize a lot more people to try to cram every thing they can carry on into the main cabin. This results in slower loading/unloading times of people because all the carry ons fill the bins quite inefficiently; many peoples bags wind up in bins that aren't easy for them to access for them to unload; some peoples bags won't fit at all because there has never been enough room in the main cabin. The airlines now have to compensate for this by asking for volunteers to gate check bags for every flight, which is a waste of everyone's time involved, and still not as efficient for anyone involved as simply checking bags up front like airlines originally were planned to do and airports were planned to handle.

"Primarily: checked baggage exists as a system to get baggage out of the cramped main cabin and into simpler, dedicated storage with marginal and reasonably efficient load/unload times. By charging fees for any checked baggage (as opposed to excessive checked baggage as used to be the regime), the airlines incentivize a lot more people to try to cram every thing they can carry on into the main cabin."

So Frontier, Spirit, and now the "Basic Economy" fares charge even more for cabin bags than for checked bags. Problem solved.

One theory I heard about the checked bag fees (back when carry-on bags were no extra charge) was that the fee freed up cargo space so the airline could carry more paid air cargo, purposefully pushing baggage into the main cabin.

«So Frontier, Spirit, and now the "Basic Economy" fares charge even more for cabin bags than for checked bags. Problem solved.»

Because no one ever travels with baggage? You can argue its "price transparency", but forcing something everyone needs to be an "add-on" is awfully shady.

«One theory I heard about the checked bag fees (back when carry-on bags were no extra charge) was that the fee freed up cargo space so the airline could carry more paid air cargo, purposefully pushing baggage into the main cabin.»

The other theory I've heard is that "unbundling" a lot of these fees and moving them to being charged at checkin and/or the gate has meant that traditional travel agents and corporate booking can't touch or negotiate them (because they aren't direct flight costs anymore). Given most corporate expense systems don't allow for reporting "add-on fees" at an airport (and it took a while for any corporate execs to catch up to a possible need to add baggage fees as an expense that could/should be reported; many companies still seem to have yet to notice), this was a good way for the airlines to increase flight costs across the board without immediately upsetting fat cat corporate clients and choice travel agents by sneakily passing the cost difference directly to employees/flyers who at that point were a "captive audience" to the new fees.

I have heard the same about this freeing up more room for paid cargo. It seems plausible, but I would love if someone has hard evidence of this.

Right, I've always thought it made more sense to charge for carry-ons than for (some moderate allowance of) checked bags, since checked bags are easier on the airline:

- less of the scarce cabin space used

- less time/complication loading the plane

- less labor to inspect (you have to apply more scrutiny to stuff a passenger can use in flight), although airless don't directly pay for that.

... but less desirable for passengers (other than not having to carry):

- have to wait for it at baggage claim

- can't access it during the flight

- have to risk the stuff being stolen or lost

Not surprisingly, every flight has the overhead bins over capacity, even though this shouldn't be possible! (I think it's because someone will have a regulation size carry-on and then add a second carry-on that takes too much space, and airline employees aren't paid enough to start confrontations by correcting passengers.)

Previous HN comment/replies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12438683#12439465

The difficulty with that has mostly been logistics. It's hard to confirm what people are bringing on as a carry-on until you're literally boarding the plane.

Try getting $50 out of someone as they're boarding a plane.

A major part of these choices involve whether they're feasible in situations with time pressure and frustrated passengers. Luckily airline staff have huge latitude to help defuse situations with angry customers.

Working for an airline is a thankless job

Last time I checked, AA didn't charge for getting a seat early: they just charge extra for all the seats that aren't all the way at the back.

The last time I was stuck flying with them the plane wasn't even 1/3rd full. A few people, sitting near the front, were part of their ridiculous set of reward tiers. The rest of us? Packed in the back. After the attendants closed the doors, we got the go ahead to just move to sensible seats of the exact same size and amenities, but that they'd have wanted us to pay extra for.

The airline knew the flight was empty the night before, and so did everyone that went through the check in process and sees all the empty seats they tried to upsell. Is the chance for an extra fee or two beat having the old black lady next to me look at the empty middle of the plane and ask if we were in American Airlines or in the Montgomery Plane company?

Seems odd also as they would normally not want all the passenger weight in the back, for center-of-gravity balance. Probably also why they encouraged people to spread out after boarding.

I doubt the passenger weight matters much if it is a larger (7x7 or A3xx) plane?

Correct, if you book a Main Cabin (coach) ticket on AA seat selection is free. The only exceptions are seats in "Main Cabin Extra" which almost always have 10%+ more legroom. These are usually the first row in coach, plus the exit rows.

That said, some MCE seats (and some MC seats) can only be selected pre-checkin by AA flyers with status. AA status holders also do not pay extra for MCE seats, whether they are status reserved or not.

There are seats that are not "Main Cabin Extra" but that AA will still charge you for, although less than they would charge you for MCE. Once the free seats are full, your options are to pay extra, or accept what is most likely going to be a middle seat separated from anyone you're traveling with.

My academic institution refuses to pay for any kind of seat upgrades, so from my perspective, the rational response is to fly on another airline. I will probably have to avoid airlines that start "offering" "Basic Economy" fares for the same reason.

Those are "preferred" seats. They're usually windows and aisles close to the front of the plane. They are released to everyone once check-in happens.

They save them pre-checkin for status holders (people who fly 25,000+ miles a year typically). As someone who flies _way_ above that number I appreciate that they do, as I am typically buying last minute tickets (less than 2 weeks out) that are much more expensive. Those seats mean that despite paying more than most people on the plane, I'm not stuck in a middle seat most of the time.

That benefits attracts people like me to try and stay loyal with an airline rather than going with the lowest bidder. I'm willing to bet that people with similar flying habits to me provide the majority of profit for an airline as well.

> Those seats mean that despite paying more than most people on the plane, I'm not stuck in a middle seat most of the time.

The MCE seats also serve this purpose.

> I'm willing to bet that people with similar flying habits to me provide the majority of profit for an airline as well.

Well, because it encourages people like you to keep their "status," and people without "status" now have to pay extra for a regular seat, it probably benefits the airline. But it is another fare class that the airline invented to make more money, much like the basic economy fares discussed in the article.

You may appreciate it, but I don't see a justification for why it should exist. The fact that you pay extra for last minute tickets is neither here nor there in terms of whether that should buy you the preferred seat, and the fact that you have status has nothing to do with the fact that you purchase last minute. (and, in fact, if someone else with status booked 1 month early, they'd be more likely to get that seat than you). I say this as someone who has flown on <24h notice internationally and domestically multiple times in the past year. (and of course these last minute fares can often be rock-bottom cheap, it all depends).

I understand what you're saying, but the mileage programs are not really about "loyalty"; they're about misallocating corporate dollars to more expensive seats to the benefit of the airline and the traveller/employee. I don't feel that people like you providing "the majority of revenue" to airlines should really matter either way. Dollars for seats.

I managed to just cross a mileage program threshold this year but I'll continue ranting about how terrible these programs and the flying experience in general is. Especially because having bargain-basement status on United means nothing when you're flying out of a major hub :)

>After the attendants closed the doors, we got the go ahead to just move to sensible seats of the exact same size and amenities, but that they'd have wanted us to pay extra for.

Well, you're lucky you were not on Air Asia. They don't allow you to move to the seats they charge for (Emergency row etc.,) even if they are all empty and the rest of the leg space challenged aircraft is extremely full.

What incentive would you have to upgrade if you knew taking a chance on them being empty might yield a free upgrade? How do they disperse the free seats if they _do_ want to give them away?

>How do they disperse the free seats if they _do_ want to give them away?

Normally on airlines like Etihad, people either just take the seat by themselves, or ask the crew and move into the seats.

Last time I flew American, it was a bit different, because the system showed many seats as simply unavailable -- not even purchasable. I paid for seats to ensure I could sit next to my wife... And we had the whole row to ourselves. I complained very loudly to the flight attendant and ended up getting a refund email a few days later. So I guess that worked.

I no longer pay for specific seats on a plane.

#2 is complete BS (fuel is an inherent part of the cost) but I have no problem with the rest. I especially don't get the outrage over baggage fees. Transporting passenger baggage costs money, both due to handling it, and due to the opportunity cost of cargo they could be carrying instead. "Free" baggage just means that light travelers subsidize people with bags. That's great if you have bags, but not great if you don't, and incentivizes inefficiency.

The "fuel surcharge" is usually a tax dodge. British Airways, which has the most notorious surcharge in the industry, does it because the taxes only apply to the fare itself; if they split out fuel charge separately, they only get taxed on the base fare.

Interesting! I assume there's some requirement to at least vaguely reflect the actual cost of fuel, so they can't just charge $1 for the "fare" and put the rest as a tax-free "fuel surcharge"?

The entire point of VAT is that it takes care of situations like this one; is there something funny about VAT for fuel?

Not saying I agree, but I believe the general argument is that if tax was already paid/collected when the fuel was purchased, unbundling it from the fare price prevents it being taxed again.

How are fully-consumed process inputs handled in VAT? It's easy to calculate non-consumed inputs. They paid $x per kg of aluminum. Each finished product contains y kg. So the "cost basis" for each product is $x * y.

But what happens to, say, the electricity used to melt the aluminum before being poured into molds?

I think it works as follows: say you make sales for one million plus 20% VAT. You get paid 1.2mn, but 200k are for the taxman. However, you already paid VAT for your inputs, say 30k for 150k in materials and 20k for 100k in electricity. You then give to the state only 150k: the 200k you collected minus the 50k you paid (i.e 20% of the 'Value added' 1mn-150k-100k).

Ah, that makes sense. Relatively easy to calculate compared to the itemization I was thinking of -- at least, I'm assuming it can be aggregated in a way that makes the calculations easy.

VAT only taxes added value. So, if VAT applied to fuel, the airline gets a VAT rebate for everything that they buy (including fuel), and then pays VAT on their total sales. Nothing is taxed twice.

If there's some tax benefit to splitting a fuel surcharge out, obviously taxes on fuel aren't an ordinary VAT...

Fuel duty is its own thing in Britain, so at a complete guess maybe fuel duty subsumes/replaces VAT but then companies aren't able to offset it like they can with VAT?

Also taxes are paid when you redeem miles for an award flight. BA is happy that you have to also pay ~1/2 of the ticket price in cash besides the miles.

They used not to include it in the price and surprise you about it later. They knew that UA was being compared to DL to AA. Each of those companies had different prices that they paid for fuel. The other bit about that, when the fuel markets fall.. you rarely see the airfares fall as well. Right now it's incredibly low, but that's really rare. (Seeing 200/400$ fares of US->EUR flights)

I'm also guessing they could buy "fuel futures" if they really wanted to, to prevent them from being hurt by price changes.

Southwest pioneered this practice, I'm guessing they all do it now.

Airlines are locked in on their fuel prices years and years in advance. Doubtless many of them are still futured into paying the jet fuel equivalent of $4/gallon for gasoline.

The flip-side is with baggage fees, passengers have incentive to sneak bulky baggage into the cabin, or carry the absolute maximum allowed amount of carry-on. This ends up forcing people to gate-check their luggage, because the cabin runs out of space. This costs time and annoyance.

I assume the airlines have done the math and the time cost is less than the increase in revenue.

All that said, I almost always fly carry-on only, for my own convenience (no waiting at baggage claim, no lost/damaged luggage, etc). I often wonder what on earth some people are taking with them on vacation - I can do a two week vacation with carry-ons (1 luggage, 1 small backpack), and that includes a bicycle kit (helmet, shorts/jersey, shoes, and pedals) on top of normal clothing.

I'm skeptical that baggage fees have a lot to do with people bringing carryons on board. Business travelers typically don't personally pay for checked luggage and many are exempted anyway because of frequent flyer programs. Yet most just take carryons for the flexibility and to save time--and because they usually know how to pack efficiently. When I walk through the departure level, most of the people I see lined up to check vast piles of suitcases look mostly like families traveling.

Then there's always the jerks who bring their entire matched luggage set as "carry on" and then bitch and moan that nobody will move their stuff in the overhead for them, and act offended when anyone heaves a sigh and rolls their eyes as they trudge up and down the aisle looking for somewhere to shove their bag that they know won't even fit anyway. "I fly all the time, I know it will fit" -_-

Anecdata, but I have gone from 100% checkin to almost 100% carryon because I'm simply not interested in paying one more fee. I'd rather have someone handle my bag for me, especially if the alternative is schlepping it through multiple connections, but the airlines have incentivized people to carryon instead. It absolutely slows down boarding and fills overheads. This is probably why Southwest still allowed 'free' bags; they turn around planes quicker than anyone else.

You're right. Charging for baggage is reasonable, but the in-cabin consequences are pretty annoying. I'm actually surprised that it's worth it, given how much extra time it must take to turn around an airplane.

The "right" answer would, of course, be to charge for carry-on luggage too. I think some airlines are starting to do this now. I bet their customers won't be happy though.

>The flip-side is with baggage fees, passengers have incentive to sneak bulky baggage into the cabin, or carry the absolute maximum allowed amount of carry-on. This ends up forcing people to gate-check their luggage, because the cabin runs out of space. This costs time and annoyance.

Right, but that's an artifact of only charging for one of two "cost-adders", when they're close substitutes.

It doesn't refute the general point that it makes sense in general to charge more for things that add legit costs; the problem here is that they're not being consistent about it. Per previous discussion, charging for carry-ons seems to make more sense than charging for (a moderate allowance of) checked luggage:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13311317

I mostly agree with you. But I am willing to bet the the baggage fee is much more than what is costs the airline to transport the bag. Which would mean the airline is generating more profit from the bag people than the bag-less.

There's nothing wrong with that. Charging more than the underlying cost is how companies make money. The airline industry is fairly competitive, so if there's room to cut prices, it'll happen.

Apart from perhaps printing a boarding pass and (given security) food on very long flights, these all seem OK to me. Not charging for checked baggage is equivalent to taxing those who pack light and subsidizing those who pack heavy (and cost more fuel).

Charging for checked luggage means I'm going to bring as much luggage as I possibly can get away with into the main cabin, slowing boarding and unboarding, taking up overhead bin space, etc. What they SHOULD be charging for is carry-ons.

Airlines have to pay the airport ground crew to load and unload checked luggage. It doesn't cost the airlines much extra to have really slow boarding and unboarding, nor does having the cabin packet to the max with carry-ons affect them much.

it can cause take-of delays, which can easily cascade and affect many flights. I presume these can easily cost cash, no?

It can in extreme cases, but based on totally unscientific observations, the number of flights delayed significantly because people spend too long time stowing their carry on is tiny. Even just looking a boarding related delays, I'd say people simply not showing up at the gate on time is a much bigger problem.

They just close the doors.

Even a small airplane like a 737 costs millions of dollars to purchase and (off the top of my head) another million a year to maintain. When it isn't in the air, moving people who paid for tickets it is not earning its keep.

Sure, but turn-around times are affected by many factors, and the time it takes people to stow their luggage is probably one of the least significant.

Or, not cram so many people into the space originally designed for half as many. Then everyone's roller bag would fit just fine.

I wish I could cash in on checked luggage for reduced fares; I never travel with more than a carry on, but have tons of free checked bagged due to status.

The overall matrix of things that apply to a flight is annoying though.

There's an Uber for Air Freight business in that somewhere. Pair people who want cheap next day delivery on a package and people who are flying but not checking any luggage.

Great idea but don't NA air transport regulations require you pack your own luggage? I certainly got asked that multiple times last time I went from Europe to NA.

I wonder if that's an actual requirement, or whether answering no will just guarantee a baggage search. You could also receive the goods and then pack them yourself to avoid that.

A bad actor could hide drugs in extremely non-obvious ways.

That's a clusterfuck of nope right there, one bad apple tries to smuggle drugs and someone innocent could end up executed.

Just exclude countries that have harsh drug smuggling penalties from the program.

Japan has cheap next day delivery for parcels. You can even send food such as fresh sashimi in chilled containers (and it will arrive cold and carefully handled). Of course, smaller country with a culture of good service.

You don't need to go to Japan for that. Many years ago I ordered fresh lobster from Massachusetts to Minnesota, it arrived packed on ice and still alive.

This is how DHL started, in 1969. [1]

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/13/how-dhl-pioneered-the-shar...

I'd be satisfied if I could just query the price of the flight by entering my preferences on a form.

Can't you already filter by flights that don't meet your criteria?

It would be even better if you could specify an arbitrary utility function over the flight properties (total price, bags you want to bring, seat size, departure time sensitivity, etc) and have the results ranked by that function.

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