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Comment by rchowe | Hacker News Reader

Airlines (in the US, mostly) are incentivized to add these fees for two major reasons:

1. Fees are exempt from the 7.5% federal excise tax on airfare. 2. It makes the initial fare lower on airfare sites like Kayak, for people who choose the cheapest route, then they up-sell customers once they've decided.

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Every so often a flight aggregator (Kayak, Expedia, etc.) shows up. To date precisely none of them have solved the REAL customer pain point: show the actual price I will pay.

I really wish restaurants and everywhere else would include taxes in their prices too. I frankly don't care what fraction of my money is going to the government, all I care is (a) what I pay in total and (b) what I'm getting.

The real trick with an aggregator would be to say what you want (e.g. I want a carry-on bag, but I don't care where I sit or about in-flight food) and it spits out a list of total-cost airfares with those features. It would probably still skew towards the low-cost carriers where everything is a la carte, but at least people wouldn't be surprised by the total cost.

ITA's Matrix[1] shows the actual price, but rumours are that Google will shut them down in the near future in favour of Google Flights following their shutdown of the QPX Express API[2]

[1] http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15594975

Those two have nothing to do with each other. Someone in that thread purely speculated and now there are 'rumors'.

You're right, I was completely unaware of that. I read these 'rumours' on other forums as well, but I didn't bother to verify them.

"I really wish restaurants and everywhere else would include taxes in their prices too."

Easy. Move to the UK, or China, or Germany, or ...

EU mandates to show real price (including taxes)[0][1]. From my personal experience, it works with all major EU-based airlines when booking online. Of course, if you want extra (travel insurance, priority, luggage etc.) you pay separately (opt-in), but it's nothing like it was ~10 years ago when you had to play hide&seek with all these hidden taxes and opt-out extras during the booking process.

0. https://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2015/january/flight-book...

1. http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/pric...

Yes, this is one space where regulation has really helped, even if sometimes you still find that the actual price is a bit different from the one you expected.

> Fees are exempt from the 7.5% federal excise tax on airfare

Ah, just like pre... 2014? Ebay, where S&H fees were exempt from final value fees. I recall selling games for 1 cent, buy it now, but with $5 shipping, so my listing would be practically free. Ebay has smarted up in a lot of ways. One day the feds will too.

Then buyers would get angry, but really, it was to cut-out Ebay, not confuse them. I would even put the shipping cost in the title to be absolutely clear.

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