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Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

Looks like a regular, boring law full of regular, boring regulations. I don't see any issues.

>The story of this law has been dominated largely by what isn't in it: no restrictions on what airlines can charge for baggage or change fees.

I'm glad. I don't like paying baggage fees (in fact, I've started to travel much more with only a carry-on partly to avoid the fees) but this is one of those things that the market should decide. It's an extra revenue stream for airlines (or an extra perk when waived for those with status). In general gives airlines more options and more flexibility in adjusting ticket prices.

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Flying did get much worse as "1 free checked bag" became more rare. Now everyone wants to fly with a mountain climbing backpack, and planes regularly run out of overhead space.

No, I'm not checking my $10k in camera equipment because people aren't checking their dirty tshirts.

No, I'm not checking my $10k in camera equipment because people aren't checking their dirty tshirts.

This really summarizes attitudes perfectly. Except there's no need to actually label anything, no one gives a shit about other people's stuff.

My shit is stuff, and other people's stuff is shit. -George Carlin

For anyone who hasn't see the full routine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Q_4rm8SVI

> This really summarizes attitudes perfectly.

It doesn't, though. I'm perfectly happy checking my underwear and dirty tshirts.

But not my camera gear

It became more rare because the cost to fly people (plus one free checked bag) began to exceed what people were willing to pay, so airlines pulled a lever. If this were regulated, the cost of plane tickets would go up for everyone plus overhead for compliance. Maybe that's a better deal for you, but only because the government is effectively forcing other flyers to pay your way.

I suspect you have the cause and effect backwards. It's not that people weren't willing to pay the cost of the included checked bag -- back when every airline did include 1 (or even 2!) free checked bags, it's not as people wanting to fly were going to travel sites and saying, "If only the cheapest flight here was $25 less than it was, I'd buy a ticket, but guess I'm stuck with Greyhound now." Instead, by not including the checked bag in the cost of the initial fare, an airline got to have a lower number in the list of ticket prices when customers checked on aggregation sites like Orbitz and Expedia, and most other airlines quickly followed.

This. It's the same reason American hotels are expanding and increasing "resort fees", and auto dealerships try to charge as much as possible for "doc fees". Businesses have essentially added their OWN taxes on transactions in order to lower the prices they advertise below what they actually charge. It's got a name: bait and switch.

US really just needs to adapt transparent pricing laws, like most of the civilized world. Yes, I know sales tax in various jurisdictions makes it impossible, but at least make them advertise the "all in" cost including any fees.

Quite a few airlines in Europe tack "fuel surcharge" fees onto tickets, especially those booked using frequent-flyer miles. Depending on the airline and destination, the "fuel surcharge" -- which must be paid in cash -- for redeeming miles can approach the cost of just buying a ticket.

For example, if you book a flight from the US to London on American Airlines, redeeming miles, you'll be on the hook for around $10 in taxes. If you book the same flight, using American Airlines miles, but happen to be unfortunate enough to get it on their partner British Airways, you'll get dinged for around five hundred dollars in "fuel surcharge".

Last time I checked, Brazil was the only country where this is illegal.

But how would that work for something like an airline ticket on a comparison site? The airline has pricing transparency- they tell you when you buy a ticket that a checked bag isn't included. It is the comparison site where that is missing.

Let's say you decided to make every airline display how much it costs to fly with one checked bag... well, why did you pick one? What if one airline let's you check two bags free? Or if one gives you free food but the other charges? Has more leg room? Etc...

Pricing transparency laws only help things like "you have to include all taxes and fees for the exact item you are selling"

It doesn't help with requiring a company to include certain extras (like a checked bag or two) with the price. You are allowed to choose how you bundle things together, no matter the pricing transparency laws.

It is a website. With forms. And logic to query a database. And do math.

Aggregators are capable of asking what city, date and time, how many bodies, which service class, which seat, etc. and returning your menu of options with prices based on those details.

Yet asking "how many bags" and multiplying that by the airline's rate is impossible?

Of course it requires changes. I suspect those happen now and then.

My point is that airlines would be able to find something else to withhold by default and charge for if you tried to mandate bag fees be displayed up front. A fee for being allowed to recline. A fee for getting to sit behind someone who isn't allowed to recline. The list goes on and on.

However, then you can't argue anymore that "the market" will handle it. Because even the theory behind that requires that market participants are informed - which they evidently aren't.

That's not how it works. You're creating your own definition of what a market is or should be or how it works.

A suitcase when you travel is not an extra. The payment of the waiter when I dine out is not an extra.

And transparency is not about informing the customer about charges in the fine-print of a website or a menu card. Transparency is being up-front with the total cost so you make it easy for the customer to make an informed choice.

I usually travel with a single carry-on bag when I travel. It's a tiny hard sided suitcase that fits in the carry-on space and includes enough clothes for a week. I don't technically need a free checked bag nor would I typically use one as I want to avoid the insane wait at the luggage claim. So this I disagree with. I don't mind charging for checked bags, but then I don't mind paying more for air travel for certain things, so I don't think that this particular example fits.

I wholeheartedly agree that tipping should go away. It's literally a remnant of the post slavery age in America and has a nasty habit of lowering workers wages. Another problem is taking dine and dash bills out of the waiters wages. The waiter shouldn't be paying for deadbeats.

So I agree with your general point, just not on the airline baggage example.

Require companies that sell online to offer an open API so it's easy to aggregate? Sounds nuts, but not that different from open banking (PSD2) in the EU.

Ok... what information is required in the API? You can't possibly describe every possible differentiating characteristic of a product in an API... even for a specific case like airlines, there are countless differences. Plane type, baggage limits, weight limits on bags, leg room, in flight entertainment, Internet, food, drinks, etc. you want the law spelling out what needs to be included? What about other industries? New ones that are being created? What happens when new features are added that aren't in the api spec? Internet wasn't a thing on airplanes 10 years ago, so it wouldn't have made it in the spec, but now internet access is a huge differentiator for flights.

This is actually an easy problem to solve: define a list of extras in the standard including fees. The structure for each extra can be pretty rigid. Something like e.g.

short-name: Tray fee

long-name: You get a foldable tray for seat to use during the flight.

price: 39,99

includes-tax: false

This is basic data modeling, really. Tne real thing would probably have closer to 50 well defined fields instead of 4 because of real-world self-inflicted complexity in the system, but the concept is the same.

"Pricing transparency laws only help things like "you have to include all taxes and fees for the exact item you are selling"

That is part of the point. You can also have standard prices to quote: "All fees they charge every customer plus one checked bag should be included in price", for example. Airlines that offer bonuses for free will advertise it clearly. After all, we know when a shampoo bottle includes 20% extra shampoo temporarily - I'm not sure this will be an issue. People know that 2 hotels might be the same price but only one of them offers use of a pool - I'm pretty sure they will look at airlines as well.

Yes, I know sales tax in various jurisdictions makes it impossible

I heard this argument many times before but never quite understood the explanation. Could you elaborate on this?

In the US there are taxes at the time of sale. These taxes change depending on where you are making the purchase, where you live, who you are, and what you are buying.

Those things are fixed at purchase though aren't they? I don't pay a lower sales tax in a different state because I live somewhere else, and I don't pay less sales tax on a book if I buy it in the same transaction as something with a different levy. Europe has VAT on most items, but the rates are different based on what you're buying, where you're buying it and where you reside, but we manage it

The POS system knows how to calculate the cost of each item, why can't they just out that on the sticker instead,.

Sure, and there are some places that include tax in the listed price. Usually businesses that do this figure it out so the price after tax comes to a whole number. This goes against the common .99 marketing psychology, and is a red flag that they might be skimming.

However if the sale is online and the company has a presence in multiple states they have to charge based on the user, which they cant do until they know who the user is.

Edit: Just to be clear I wish they would put the final price. Here is a picture I found of Pat's King of Steaks in Philadelphia, they have price tax and total for each item.

https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/03/2c/33/c2/...

Seems like this would be a pretty simple fix wouldn't it? Choose your state when you jump onto a shopping site to see the price with taxes and shipping included. Instead they wait to bait and switch at the register.

For some reason I can't reply to a child of this comment. It would be easy enough to require all advertising to publish the lowest and highest all in price within the geographic area of the advertisement. For many ads, it would also be possible to require at least per state granularity. That would not be an onerous burden.

Seconding the question by @maccard. You're eventually charged a certain amount during payment so in principle it is possible.

Or, if the FTC was on the ball, they might call it Deceptive Advertising.

With one crucial difference. I can’t buy the car without the doc fee, but I can fly without a checked bag.

Yes, you can. Get to the final signing then refuse to pay it. Tell the dealer you'll walk if it isn't waived. I do it every time.

I chuckled at your scenario, but more realistically airlines realized that some critical mass of the market would rather pack a little lighter and save on their airfare instead of paying for a checked bag. If the scenario went as you described, then the airlines were trading their credibility for a short term boost in profits and the market will correct to their mid/long-term disadvantage. This is a poor consolation to the unsavvy consumers who "fell for it", but the solution is to produce savvier consumers, not to penalize the current crop of savvy consumers by inflating their ticket prices.

"This is a way for airlines to get the lowest price in front of consumers" and "this is a way to address a market segment willing to go carry-on only in order to save money" are not mutually exclusive, are they? Consider the recent addition of "Basic Economy" fares for some airlines now, which incur extra charges for overhead bin space. I would assert that this is a way to get an even lower price in front of consumers. You would presumably assert that it is a way for the airlines to let people who can travel with little to no luggage save even more. Again: both of those things can be true.

Lol they are both true; that’s my point. The market is securing an agreeable outcome for both parties. It’s literally a win-win scenario. The airlines are finding ways to carve out more value for their customers in exchange for their business. This is eminently desirable!

I think your real issue is against the increased cost of air travel and the inconvenience it poses for travelers who are unwilling or unable to compromise by trading off luggage for price. It sucks, but it’s not “greedy corporations”; it’s just economic reality.

> it's not as people wanting to fly were going to travel sites and saying, "If only the cheapest flight here was $25 less than it was"

Is this meant to say that consumers aren't price sensitive? If so, why don't airlines just charge arbitrarily high prices?

Maybe Orbitz should include baggage fees in their pricing estimates?

I think you're missing one piece of this picture. If there is unused space/weight capacity, the airline fills that space with cargo from traditional/package carriers. So there are third parties, unseen to you as an airline passenger, competing with you on price to put stuff in that cargo hold.

I have the opposite experience. I never want to check my bags because waiting around at the carousel for a checked bag isn't my idea of a good time. I want to be able to just walk off the plane and get to ground transportation with minimal delays.

Yet airlines keep offering me free baggage check at the gate on full flights. I actively try to avoid checking my bags, but I'm usually in boarding Group 3 or 4, so I'm forced to have my bag gate-checked. I hate it. Most people do. Some even try to untag their force-checked bags on the jetway when they see overhead luggage space, and then get told off because that is prohibited. I've resorted to buying an AmazonBasics underseat bag[1] so I never have to check my bag.

For domestic flights, in my experience few people want to check their bags. (exceptions exist of course, like in your case)

For international flights, checking bags is included in the cost of the ticket.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Amazon161214-Underseat-L...

On the routes I usually fly, waiting at the carousel usually doesn’t add more than maybe 15 minutes. And I usually go to the bathroom and grab some food anyway.

It’s certainly preferred over the hell of trying to get my bags overhead, and also allows you to wait and be the last person on the plane, minimizing time crammed in a tiny seat.

The amount of cumulative time wasted because of stowing bags is immense.

The mean is low, but he variance is very high - if they lose your bag, you could be waiting for days!

I mostly fly direct domestic, so it’s basically impossible to lose my luggage.

Waiting at the carousel has never been 15 minutes for me. You must travel to tiny airports. I literally never seen an airport that's taken less than half an hour to deliver my bags.

SFO, JFK, SEA, and MCO (Orlando). Orlando is the smallest and also the slowest. Always direct, domestic flights.

> I have the opposite experience. I never want to check my bags because waiting around at the carousel for a checked bag isn't my idea of a good time. I want to be able to just walk off the plane and get to ground transportation with minimal delays.

I see how that's convenient, and I would prefer that too. But not to be passive aggressive about it: I don't want to be part of the problem, so I check luggage when I can.

From other people's comments in this thread I see that most people don't give a shit about anyone else, so I guess I'm an exception.

> I'm usually in boarding Group 3 or 4

Me too. Is this determined by just price of the ticket. I don't get how I am always group 4.

At least for the major US airlines (Delta, United, AA):

- Group 0/pre-boarding is active military, disabled, and infants

- Group 1 is first class & mileage club people

- Group 2 is business class

- Group 3/4 is usually economy

- Group 5 is usually the cheapest basic economy people

You can usually get bumped up to Group 2 by getting the airline's credit card or having a bunch of miles

Why do active military get to board with children and disabled people?

Because 'rah rah' we all love the military. It doesn't cost them anything and they get the PR of everyone boarding a plane hearing about how much they love the military.

It might be a deploy. Military sometimes use civilian transport to cut costs.

Because it's the least that can be done for people willing to take substandard pay for risking their lives in literal battle zones. You can only really use it when you're traveling on orders, meaning being transferred to somewhere away from your family or when you're in full uniform. Most service members I know only use it when being deployed.

You can just walk in after business class and they’ll let you in without hassling about you getting ahead of your next-to-toilet class.

Guaranteed overhead.

Lol

This isn’t always true, fortunately. I’ve seen JetBlue attendants yell at people who kept trying to jump in boarding classes. Line cutters are scum.

The real scum are the people that sit in the back and fill in the overhead bins up front.

Google "travel hacking", learn the game, play the game, and then thank me later. :)

My bag fits under the seat, so I never need to worry.

one hack you can use in the US (admittedly with a lot of overhead) if you're worried about tampering with checked bags, loss etc. is to check in a firearm inside of a particular bag with other expensive goods.

the requirements (law) specifically states that only YOU may carry the opening mechanism for the case, and it must be a hard case. sure they might ask you to open it, but it will be tracked with great vigor, must be in a hard case, and only you can open it.

Starter pistols can be used too instead of a ‘real’ gun. At the destination they keep the bag secure for you to pickup, no getting it off the baggage carousels.

Of course some destinations won’t let you have a gun...

Ammo works too. Worked at a shop where they would have us transport a 1U server in a case that also held a single .22 round. You would fly to the location, pick up the server, and hand the bullet to the person working the desk to discard. Got the occasional dirty look, but prototypes were never lost. Empty case could be checked on the way home.

That helps protect your baggage from theft; it doesn't protect your baggage from damage.

That's what the Pelican case (with a serious padlock on it) is for.

TSA (or equivalent travel agencies) can force that locked hard case to be just large enough to cover the arm and its ammunition and not all the baggage.

In my recent flights, the time spent on getting carry-on baggage stowed properly before departure is what makes it a mystery to me that airlines aren't offering free checked baggage and charging for carry-ons.

It actually common on European short haul for the company to “offer” to stove carryon in the hold at the gate at least from what I have personally seen.

Yep. And if you get lucky, the people at RyanAir won't measure/weigh it if you volunteer when they ask. Means you can often get by even if you're over their limits, though it varies by airport I think.

Hold space is actually a limited commodity.

You could also pay for a premium ticket and board early to protect your very expensive equipment. Sure the extra $25-$100 wouldn't be a huge burden compared to the $10k of your equipment.

Can I? I show up extra early when I can (e.g. not a connecting flight) to make sure my carry-on is not bumped, but the only way to not have to worry about this is flying business, and that's more like a few thousand dollars extra, for cross-atlantic.

I may pay $25-$100 more. But not $3000.

yeah... I frequently fly with guitars. On Southwest, you can pay for early-bird check-in and get a nearly guaranteed A boarding spot. On American and United, you can pay $15 for early boarding. For international and generally on anything larger than a 767, overhead compartment space is rarely an issue.

$10k is not even very expensive yet. It's approximately just a camera body and a few lenses.

Regardless, paying extra $50-$100 on every flight sounds unreasonably high. $10-20 would be more reasonable.

You're missing the point. Nobody cares about the value of your bag.

Ironically this is cutting into airline revenue as gate time increases. Southwest makes it a point to reduce time at the gate as much as possible by herding people onto the plane in a stampede, and part of that is making sure what put their bags below the plane by offering two checked bags free. Market forces will eventually balance this out for the the other airlines since SW intentionally tries to avoid routes served by other major airlines

I travel a lot. The problem isn't your first bag, it's that a lot of people also store their second bag in overhead which should go at their feet but they want to stretch their legs. This adds way more problems than the first bag.

I'm always carry-on even with my free & priority checked bags thanks to status. For business travel, I like to move quickly through the airport. For personal travel, especially international, nothing is worse than pulling around a lot of luggage like a first-time tourist. Those pebble roads, tight commuter trains, and long step-walks in Europe can be a drag. Last month we travelled 21 days across 5 countries with just a carry-on.

In both cases, the airline losing your bag is a real pain to deal with on any trip – happened a lot to me on multi-connects but much less of a problem on directs.

>Flying did get much worse as "1 free checked bag" became more rare.

I disagree. It got cheaper and some of the price savings came as a result of removing the old perks(which are still there, but you have to pay for them separately). By the way, checked baggage was never free. There was always a hidden cost that was not reflected in the ticket price.

>Now everyone wants to fly with a mountain climbing backpack

Airlines have gotten better at designing and running routes in such a way that the airplane is as full as it can be. Also after regulations were relaxed airlines now use the hub-spoke model instead of being forced to do direct flights between two small-markets (and thereby making ticket more expensive), which results in, again, full airplanes. Years ago there was a good chance that at any given time I would fly in a half-empty plane, now it rarely happens. I think this is what you're noticing.

> I'm not checking my $10k in camera equipment because people aren't checking their dirty tshirts.

Occasionally I travel with expensive equipment (e.g. I have a high-end mini-PC) and in those cases I opt to pay $20 for zone 1/2 priority boarding so that I put my stuff in the overhead compartment ahead of zone 3/4/5 masses and therefore limit the risk of having it gate-checked. I like that I am able to make that choice, as opposed to not having the choice.

I don't really care what's in my luggage or how much it cost to check a bag but they the delays to get back my checked bags are killing me (when they don't loose them)... much quicker to keep everything with me.

Actually, I think the problem may be that they didn't go all the way. If overhead space also cost, then it wouldn't be the scarce free resource everyone fights over. A much cheaper cost for checking small items (backpack, over the shoulder bag) and very close to parity with checked items (maybe above, maybe below) for suitcase sized items would likely solve the problem. A slight reduction in fees for checked bags would also be warranted.

Once everything is accurately priced and tracked, there's no problem with space anymore. They know how many cubic feet of space they have, and they know what they've charged for.

At that point you're starting to deal with some serious transaction costs.

Do you really think so? I imagine a $100 ticket would go to something like $97, and there might be a $5 fee for a small overhead space (regular size purse), $10, for a medium space (backpack or large purse), and $15-$20 for small luggage, and then going up steeply from there (since you should be checking things that size). Checked baggage prices might drop by $5 or so too, since they aren't subsidizing free overhead space.

Free additionals that have direct cost to the the provider but may or may not be useful or utilized by the customer are things for luxury products. Overall, everyone is better off (even if they don't feel better off) by paying for what they actually use. The people that lose out are the people that used to use more than their fair share. If you still like the idea of paying one (higher) price and having things like luggage covered, that's what other classes (like premium economy, business and first class) are for. It's called economy class for a reason...

I'm talking about "transaction costs" in the economics sense - the cost to the company of tracking who's paid for what, to the customer of comparing complex pricing schemes, etc.

No one likes getting nickled and dimed. While they are at it, weigh everyone before boarding, to properly charge them for how much extra fuel they consume beyond the base charge. Then heavier people won't be using more than their "fair" share. Except now you've pissed off even the super skinny people who have to deal with the "transaction cost" / extra time involved, who were perfectly willing in the past to perhaps pay slightly more than if they were heavier because it simplifies the experience. Heavier people also think that way, not "oh boy I'm getting a good deal flying at the same price as this lightweight".

Totally agree. In fact since a lot of people prefer overhead vs checked, overhead should be more expensive.

At the very least, I should be guaranteed to have some overhead space without having to fight to get on the plane as early as possible.

There are airlines which charge for use of the overhead bin.

Indeed, that works great for all the people who pack and measure exactly their bags a month in advance when they buy their ticket so they know the exact dimensions.

In reality, no one knows the dimensions of their bags until the night before, and that's too late for the airline to tell them "no" or add charges reasonably.

The problem is that people insist on bringing crap like this[0] with them onboard the flight when it clearly doesn't fit. I get a slightly sadistic pleasure whenever I see a confiscated herd of these bags at the end of the jet bridge. Like, those people really thought they could bring a bag the size of their mini-fridge onto a flight? Get real, people.

[0] https://www.surfdome.us/oakley_luggage_-_oakley_large_roller...

I'm super confused. In EU all airlines use sizers before the gate, if whatever you want to bring on board doesn't fit into the sizer(and the bag you posted definitely wouldn't) it has to be checked in at a heavy fee. Do US airlines just don't care what you bring in board with you?

The size matters in the US, too, but that doesn't stop a dozen people from trying to get away with carrying on an oversized bag. You'll usually find anywhere from a few to a dozen bags confiscated on the boarding bridge.

I'm in the same boat as you. I do these long trips, and also have multiple laptops and lots of camera equipment. I use a backpack for my carry-on, because that is less likely to be checked/gate checked, but even that is a problem because now airlines reduced the weight limit of carry on items and started aggressively enforcing this. There is simply no way my photo equipment will weigh less than 8kg. Impossible.

What the hell am I supposed to do?

I would gladly pay money if they allowed me the usual old 23kg standard.

I’m with you on people bringing bags onboard that are far too large for overhead storage, but the solution to that problem is airlines actually enforcing size restrictions.

That's not actually a solution. The airlines have created a situation where there's an incentive for more people to bring carry-on bags than will fit in overhead storage even if all bags are within size restrictions. Stricter enforcement of the existing bag size restrictions will only slightly improve the situation. That's part of why we're starting to see a new lower class of service where you aren't allowed to bring a bag for the overhead bin.

It’s absolutely a solution. Even if the airlines create an incentive to bring carry-on, if there’s a reasonable limit to the number of items and size, everyone’s luggage will fit! This is how the rest of the world operates airlines.

Hi, I'm from the rest of the world.

This is not how airlines are operated. In many other countries you get one or two checked bags included in the ticket.

A strange thing occurs as a consequence: you just board the plane, and then the plane goes.

Do you do the weird not-a-queue-but-queueish-blob-of-people thing? No, because there is not a zero-sum game for overhead space.

Do you do the pay-extra-to-spend-longer-in-the-hell-tube thing? No, because there is not a zero-sum game for overhead space.

Do you spend 45 minutes to an hour fucking around with idiots who are trying to spit in the face of both geometry and physics and falling arse-first onto the nose of good manners? Not at all, flights are typically on the runway 15-20 minutes after the first boarding call. There is not a zero-sum game for overhead space.

When I first flew in the USA I thought "something is wrong with my flight". It took me several flights to realise: this is normal here. And it's maddening.

I'm also from the rest of the world but what you are saying doesn't match my reality.

In every flight I find plenty of people (myself included) that don't want to check in baggage, due to mishandling, possibility of loss, delays at the destination, and/or problems with connections. So even in airlines where you get a checked bag with the ticket, I regularly see all those things you say don't happen. Maybe it depends on which part of the rest of the world. I'm from Spain, for the record. At the Madrid airport you will see plenty of people queuing at boarding gates half an hour before they open. Most Spanish airlines even have a paid "priority boarding" option to board first, so people very much want to get into the hell tube sooner...

It's true that all of this is amplified for airlines that charge for checked luggage, though, so I'd rather they don't charge even if I don't want to check in myself. Competition for overhead space gets absolutely crazy when they don't charge.

I too am originally from the rest of the world, but currently living in the US, and agree that flying in the US is absurdly and frustratingly poorly managed.

My point about carry-on is that in other countries, you are strictly limited in what you can carry-on, and thus you either have to take less stuff or get checked luggage (free or otherwise). And guess what? Everything fits and people can just walk to their seat and sit down, as you described

I fail to see why the US has a system where everyone is allowed to take two giant items, and then without fail half the plane has to gate-check and it causes significant slowdowns and frustration. It’s like smacking your head into a wall repeatedly, wondering why your head hurts, and continuing.

I can see why people don’t want to check; short flights for business as so much faster when you don’t have to wait for the baggage carrousel or lost luggage. But when you’ve got a 50% chance of being checked anyway, everything breaks down.

It the 'tragedy of the commons'. As soon as one US airline charged separately for checked bags, their tickets looked cheaper and they got more traffic. So the others had to follow. Now its $15-$50 for a checked bag, depending on what scam the airline is doing this week and how cheap they want their ticket to appear. Its sort of like shipping was on Amazon - 1 cent for an appliance! Oh, and shipping is $50.

It's a solution if and only if the space allotted is enough for everyone on the plane to bring a decent sized suitcase. If not, then it's not a solution.

This is precisely my point. The US allows people to Carry on two giant bags, and everyone pushes the boundaries absurdly.

In other countries, the carry-on limit is strictly enforced. They have metal frames to test the size of your luggage, and if it doesn’t slip in, you ain’t taking it on the plane. And a “personal item” isn’t allowed to be a second bag the size of a carry-on suitcase.

If you have too much stuff, tough. Either take less crap or get checked luggage.

I've seen planes overhead full because it's not sized to support everyone bringing the max-size bag.

No you're not check your camera equipment because airlines don't cover electronics under the plane if they're lost or damaged.

That's one reason, yes. I don't know why you started your sentence with "no"

And these days they prohibit checked batteries.

How is this prohibition supposed to be enforced?

I've recent experience of flying with checked luggage which contained multiple AA NiMH rechargable batteries, spare camera batteries, and on one occasion even a fully-charged 16000 mAh power bank.

XRay Machine, usually.

Are we saying that when the hold baggage is screened then just because of a stray battery or power pack they're going to ... do what, exactly?

Not carry that bag on your flight and leave the airline scrambling to reunite passenger with luggage?

Page the passenger (who is almost certainly airside by that point) and try to get them to come (where?) to repack/deal with the contents? I've never heard of a facility where an airside passenger can temporarily get access to hold baggage once it's been screened. Wouldn't the passenger and the hold bag each have to go back through the relevant screening channel after this interaction?

I've checked batteries dozens of times and never give it a second thought. As it turns out, I had two sets of brand-new NiMH AAs in my checked luggage this morning.

> they're going to ... do what, exactly?

I can tell you exactly what they do as this happened to me ~9 months ago when I had inadvertently left an e-cigarette in a checked suitcase. I was indeed paged (I was airside) to report to a service desk, where the (quite friendly) staff led me through secure areas into the bowels of the airport, where my suitcase was awaiting me on what could be described as an "off-ramp" to the baggage roller system. I was then requested to open my suitcase and retrieve the offending item, did so, and all was well.

> I've checked batteries dozens of times and never give it a second thought

I suspect that if you start travelling through more modern airports with the kind of enhanced screening that got me you'll definitely be giving it a second thought... I also have checked them dozens of times but as screening gets updated it's looking like a thing of the past.

>> start travelling through more modern airports

[No snark intended but] can you give us a definition of "modern" so I can compare against where I usually check my batteries from?

OT, but I did once attempt to get a hot chocolate brownie with ice-cream topping through gate security at FRA; the x-ray operator was fine with it but his colleague called the supervisor over. I was eating it (quickly) while she and I were debating whether ice-cream was "a liquid", she really didn't like that. I handed the last 1/10th back :)

> can you give us a definition of "modern"

Ah, I should have probably said "airports with modern equipment" as I presume this stuff is susceptible to periodic updates regardless of the age of the airport. I suppose it does need a fairly recent baggage management system. For reference, it happened to me at Adelaide airport in Australia, which is about 10 years old. I guess then by modern I mean any first-world airport built within the last decade or so?

As noted I've flown with li-on and everything else in checked baggage a million times too and it was the first time it happened to me, so I assume the mandate is fairly recent.

That story is ridiculous, but makes me wonder what would happen if you tried to bring through a frozen bottle of water?

>Are we saying that when the hold baggage is screened then just because of a stray battery or power pack they're going to ... do what, exactly?

Not only for stray batteries, it's screened for all kinds of things, including drugs, bombs and other non-allowed items or dangerous stuff.

To my knowledge, if they do find something, you'll have some security guards come up to you and escort you to a separate section of the airport where you will be unpacking your luggage and remove the offending item, then repackage and you can go on (or not if the offense is too great to ignore).

>> if they do find something, you'll have some security guards come up to you and escort you to a separate section of the airport

I'm saying I have dozens of personal counter-examples to this claim, including another one from this morning, specifically relating to travelling with checked luggage containing batteries.

Hypothesis #1: maybe the "no batteries" policy is nowhere near as strictly enforced as people think it is?

Hypothesis #2: maybe other aspects of aviation security are nowhere near as strictly enforced as people think they are?

Who knows, maybe it is mostly security theatre?

Or maybe you didn't get spotted so far and the airline you travel with is lax in this regard. I've definitely been pulled out for batteries in the past.

Q: is it really "the airline" or - more likely - the [relevant] government a) setting and b) enforcing policies such as these?

Usually a mix of both, depends heavily on where you are, in my country security is mandated by government but the exact procedures are left to the individual airports and evaluated by government agencies.

IIRC the US has the TSA but Airports can outsource to other third parties if the TSA permits it.

I don't see how that question is really relevant considering your bag will be atleast xrayed by one of the two at some point.

If they wanted to, once detecting a battery, they could:

1. Open the luggage themselves

2. Remove the item containing the battery

3. Replace it with a note saying that the item was removed

4. Close the luggage back up

5. Put the luggage back on the plane

6. Discard the item

What are you going to do, sue them? Post bad things about them on social media?

"If they wanted to" shouldn't really be part of any sane security policy.

If 'X' is genuinely dangerous, then always deal with X as if it were actually dangerous[1]; if X is however not dangerous, stop pretending.

[1] for instance the policy of confiscating >100ml bottles of liquid at airport security "because reasons" then have agents simply stuff these dangerous liquids into one large bin and leave them there at the screening point for hours.

That's not really what I meant. What I meant was, you seem to act as if enforcement of this policy would require a lot of logistical work on the part of the airline to ensure that the passenger wasn't separated from their bags, or that they were compensated for whatever they had to ditch due to security. However, that is not actually the policy or law they have to follow, and they are free to do arbitrary things. This makes enforcement much easier.

Whether or not that is "sane" or "right" or "wrong" isn't material to my counter-point.

I'm not convinced that airlines want to get into the business of arbitrary confiscation of non-compliant items from hold baggage especially if it's to be carried out when the passenger isn't present.

After the Samsung note glitch I can see where they are coming from...

That's not true, as long as the battery is installed inside the device. You only can't check in spare batteries - they have to go in your hand luggage.

In the US at least, you could just fly Southwest and not have to worry about it :)

> Flying did get much worse as "1 free checked bag" became more rare.

Where is this rare? I have never bought an airline ticket, even in bare-bones economy, flying for business or leisure, with and without status, and not got an included checked bag. This is flying British Airways, United, Lufthansa, Delta, American, Japan, etc etc

Southwest is the only major US airline who does not normally charge for a checked bag in economy on domestic flights. Other airlines: Alaska ($25), Allegiant (up to $35), American ($35), Delta ($30), Frontier ($25), Hawaiian ($25), JetBlue ($30), Spirit ($30), United ($30).

Spirit, at least, does the right thing and charges $5 more to carry a typical bag onboard.

Maybe it's because all my flights are international, or domestic connections to international, then.

International flights are the only fights with sane pricing in the US now. What's even better is that you can avoid the slight nickel and diming they've begun to do by exclusively using international carriers.

I remember being blown away by the service I got on Singapore and Malaysia Airlines. Great food, decent amount of leg room, flight attendants that don't have complete and utter contempt for everyone that isn't in Business class or above, and free alcohol. That is until I realized they weren't that special, the North American companies were just significantly worse at pretty much all aspects of the flying experience. Often times the North American companies with their fees aren't even saving you much money, or none at all if you plan well, so its an easy choice when your flight is at least 12 hours. The dream would be to have them compete and operate domestic flights as well. It would be great to go from Chicago to Dulles on ANA instead of United.

Yup! You can't get away with that in the international market.

If you book a short-haul ticket with Lufthansa or British Airways, you'll almost certainly be offered a range of fares including a "hand-baggage only" fare. This comes with zero included checked bags.

Even if you have elite status with BA, you won't get an free checked bag if you book such a fare[1]. LH are temporarily "as a goodwill rule" allowing their elites and star alliance gold elites to get one free checked bag on 'Light' fares[2].

1. https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/baggage-ess...

2. https://www.lufthansa.com/uk/en/economy-light-fare

I've flown literally hundreds of times in my life and with a single exception of a holiday flight with TUI, I have never ever been on a flight where a checked bag was included. Literally never.

I've flown BA several times this year intra-Europe without bag included.

My worry with everything that the market should decide is that the market is terrible about deciding in markets where the barrier to entry is so high. When every market participant starts charging a particular fee—one that is routinely hidden during the purchasing of a product or service, like baggage charges are—then there’s no realistic choice.

It’s just like binding arbitration clauses. In many industries, like mobile phone service, you can’t “choose” a market participant that doesn’t have such a clause because all of them do. When all, or virtually all (because every airline doesn’t serve every trip pair, even from a given airport), airlines charge bag fees, there’s no choice to bring a bag without some form of up-front investment or having to endure the madness that is the overhead bin zoo.

On the other hand, I don’t know that banning such fees is the way to go either. I suppose I’m mostly just griping that so many things are going to pay-per-everything and the large, advertised number has decreasingly little relevance to the final, actual cost.

> It’s just like binding arbitration clauses. In many industries, like mobile phone service, you can’t “choose” a market participant that doesn’t have such a clause because all of them do.

I couldn't agree more. What you are describing is a cartel, or, at a later stage, a monopoly-ish entity.

Markets "where the barrier to entry is so high" sometimes snap into existence as a function of what they do, but also sometimes appear simply because it's easier to collude than compete.

> It’s just like binding arbitration clauses. In many industries, like mobile phone service, you can’t “choose” a market participant that doesn’t have such a clause because all of them do.

Isn't that because the industry is regulated and the government is the actual barrier to entry? Not saying it's wrong, but saying that the market isn't working when you listed something caused by regulation is unfair argument IMO.

"The market deciding" doesn't necessarily mean new entrants.

I'd mostly worry that adding too many restrictions prevents existing airlines from coming up with innovative programs & business models that benefit everyone by realigning incentives — getting to the gate earlier, checking even small bags rather than dragging a huge roller onboard and holding up the boarding process, etc.

That said, these particular regulations don't seem particularly onerous.

The problem is that prices should be transparent. When you have unexpected charges for luggage, then transparency is lost, and the market mechanism becomes defective to a great extent.

Arguably the prices are already transparent, but I think you're arguing that they should be simple and by extension, that complex pricing structures violate the free market. I would argue that complex pricing structures are advantageous for savvy customers and airlines alike, and that unsavvy customers (like me, at least when it comes to flying) should expect to pay a premium for simpler pricing structures.

An analogy would be purchasing a PC; savvy folks can save hundreds while unsavvy people trying to do the same are very likely to accidentally compromise on things that are important to them.

I don't think the solution is regulation; I think it's to teach common sense.

> unsavvy customers ... should expect to pay a premium for simpler pricing structures.

That is both inaccurate (with regards to airlines--you can't tell how much of a flat-fee ticket with baggage included is devoted to that baggage, because ticket prices are widely variable by airline and time, so straight-across comparison is not reliable) and . . . well, just awful; "do your research so you don't miss out on cheaper alternatives" is a reality sometimes, but saying that this is a desirable property of an economic system seems like an inhumane and, if taken to extremes, systemically dysfunctional position to take. It seems like it incentivizes deliberate complexity in pricing structures--and the theoretical backpressure against those trends (competition by organizations with simpler structures) seems to only very rarely be the equal of its opponent.

The alternative isn't "hold everyone's hand through all cost decisions"; the alternative is don't make things worse/more confusing unless you absolutely must.

Edit: typo.

> saying that this is a desirable property of an economic system seems like an inhumane and, if taken to extremes, systemically dysfunctional position to take.

You have it backwards. The problem with simplicity is that your options for a PC become Performance, Mainstream and Economy. If Economy would have been sufficient except for the storage, sorry, you'll have to pay +$300 for Mainstream (which also has a faster processor and more memory) even though faster storage by itself would only have been +$100.

There is efficiency in not paying for what you don't need, but it has intrinsic complexity. Or you can just buy Performance, not have to worry about anything, but pay +$800.

Having the simple options available is good because some people value time more than money. Having the complex options available is good because some people value money more than time (or can make a complex decision in a small amount of time).

Having said that, the charges for checked bags are still ridiculous, but only because the fees exceed the airlines' cost for carrying the bags by such a large amount. Fortunately they're likely to be destroyed by the price comparison sites now listing the fees next to the ticket price, which should reintroduce price competition for the checked bag fee and either get the fee reduced/eliminated or benefit the customer by giving those who don't need to check a bag a disproportionate discount.

Or some enterprising airline will realize they can profit from selling the empty space in their planes not being used for checked bags to someone like FedEx to carry packages. Then FedEx will realize they can open a storefront in the airport and charge less than the airlines to ship your luggage and you'll be able to pay FedEx $15 to pay the airline $10 to check your bag, instead of paying the airline $30. Then the airlines will just charge $14.

> The alternative isn't "hold everyone's hand through all cost decisions"; the alternative is don't make things worse/more confusing unless you absolutely must.

If you're confident and in fact the entire industry is moving in the wrong direction, then you should probably invest as much as you can afford in an airline that is offering simpler plans. For me, I'll trust that the airlines' leaders are the experts in their own market.

> saying that this is a desirable property of an economic system seems like an inhumane and, if taken to extremes, systemically dysfunctional position to take.

"Choice" (i.e., "freedom") _is_ a desirable property. Sometimes it means people make inefficient choices (per their values); in general, the proper response to this observation is to teach people how to choose efficiently.

>If you're confident and in fact the entire industry is moving in the wrong direction, then you should probably invest as much as you can afford in an airline that is offering simpler plans.

I think people should be heavily criticized for making arguments like this -- it's entirely done in bad faith. You're presenting a fairy tale, a piece of advice that is completely un-actionable for a huge majority of people. What is this person supposed to do, when

(a) No such airline exists

(b) What sort of marginal impact can <$1000 (presumably the most that can be afforded for this by the majority of people) even have in achieving actual change?

If anything, complaining about it to others (online or elsewhere) probably has more efficacy than doing the above.

Not bad faith; you just missed the joke.

(a.1) Of course there are differences in the complexity of airlines' pricing structures. To claim that all airlines' menus are equally complex is an extraordinary claim.

(a.2) The extent to which it is hard to find an airline with a very simple pricing structure testifies to the economic infeasibility of these structures unless the OP found a market inefficiency (which was overlooked by the entire industry), in which case he should exploit it to the tune of millions of dollars.

(b) Assuming the OP is in fact an airline industry visionary, when other airlines see him making money hand over fist, they'll change their ways.

> The extent to which it is hard to find an airline with a very simple pricing structure testifies to the economic infeasibility of these structures

Perhaps. As I've said elsewhere, another explanation is that it's easier to collude than compete, especially in markets with entry-barrier-induced low participant counts.

The "it came to be this way therefore the market has revealed the optimum" claim misses frequent realities of limited market control/visibility, greed/laziness (i.e. collusion), and intermediate or catch-up evolutionary behavior (i.e. it's quite hard, absent lots of historical evidence often lacking in recent markets, to tell whether something represents a stabilizing optimum or a state of flux as emergent behaviors pursue changing realities, and there are many reasons to presume the latter).

> unsavvy customers [...] should expect to pay a premium

No, they shouldn't.

Have you ever not known how much your bag costs? Whenever I book a ticket, it usually says how much a bag costs, and there is a link to the extensive rules of what can go in.

But when you search for a ticket do you get to select how many bags you are checking? That is the key to having this issue settled correctly by the market.

Why is this being downvoted? It would be great if, say, hipmunk annotated free bags rules in the flight choices.

Google flights lets you specify whether you need overhead bin access and updates the prices accordingly.

It has a feature like that for checked bags too, but it says "coming soon".

Never been on an airline that charges for overhead bags. I would guess Ryan Air does that by reputation but never heard of a US airline doing that. Just checked out google flights and there is it.

Ryan Air does not.

I think having separate bag fees actually increases price transparency — it’s right there in black and white when you purchase tickets. And since the price is separated out from the price of the tickets it’s harder to play a game wherein the real bag fee is hidden. And, airlines can compete on bag fees.

Having to pay bag fees sucks but then again, before separate bag fees we were still paying them, we just didn’t know how much of the ticket price they really were.

It's not transparent. Unless you have the ability to construct your necessities at your destination, you can't fly without your stuff. There should be a standard definition of what a flight should include (one checked, 1 person+1carryon). What would be more transparent is to discount those who aren't flying with a carry on or checked bag.

> we just didn’t know how much of the ticket price they really were.

We did realize how much they were apart of the ticket. The definition of what people brought on the plane was figured into by planning at the airline. You can't just pay for more carry-ons and bags than the airline allows. Right now what we have is an artificial price drop and it's being supplemented by fees. (Airlines are pissed that they can't hide the YQ from the price anymore)

Some people just bring less stuff, or have less in general. In general someone going for a shorter amount of time will take less stuff, why should they pay the same amount if they're not carrying the same amount?

I'm all for discounts for less bags. But there needs to be a standardized price to make comparisons on cost for travel.

> what a flight should include (one checked, 1 person+1 carryon).

This basically forces me (who never checks anything) to subsidize your (I assume) traveling habits.

What is wrong with that?

There are numerous entirely private systems that require such subsidy; are you claiming that any amount of subsidy for others' habits is objectionable (i.e. the libertarian hardline)? Or are you making some other point?

Ticket prices are lower now than ever.

Poorer people can opt out of checking luggage in order to make that visit to a dying relative possible.

Everyone here forgets what it was like when a domestic flight cost the equivalent of $600 - which is out of reach for a lot of people.

Charging for luggage and dining separate from the ticket makes that possible, in part.

Except now it'll be $540 while fuel is still low. It's going to go up even higher when fuel goes up.

I'm happy to subsidize, you know, low-income moms who need nutrition benefits. Why the heck should I subsidize people who pack too much on domestic trips?

What's your threshold for packing "too much"? Do you believe that everybody should be able to get by with an under-seat bag? Or are you pretending that the overhead bins are large enough for everyone to bring a standard piece of carry-on luggage?

Either way, it's still possible to check smaller pieces of luggage, and if most passengers could do that economically then loading and unloading the plane would be a lot quicker, saving the airlines non-trivial costs.

Without fees, the airline is minimizing the cost and you're cost averaging. With the fee-based structure, it's really a massive cost increase and a service/quality decrease.

From what you said it's abit like saying that you don't want to subsidize the police via your taxes because you never use them.

There are freerider benefits of having police. There’s no freerider benefits of other people packing more.

Spirit airlines makes like 10% profit margin. Forcing them to absorb baggage fees isn't going to come out of their margins, it's going to come out of increases in base fare.

As to subsidies: you usually can't control whether you need the police or not. You generally can control how much you pack. My wife and I didn't even pack a check-in on when we took the kid to Disney World recently. Why should I pay more for people who have to have … whatever the hell it is that people pack in a checked bag for a domestic flight.

I've never heard of a plane ticket that doesn't at a minimum allow you to carry on a bag that is small enough to fit under the seats for free. That is enough for necessities for a short trip.

Is the airline industry disrupt-able enough for market forces to make changes? Consumer choice/efforts are moot in a monopolized sector.

The airline industry has a lot of issues, but it's not a monopoly. In fact, the reason we no longer have free bags is that the industry is in a state of price war, due to competition. Airlines want to reduce their ticket costs as much as possible, and this leads to little margin on the tickets, so they save costs by not giving free bags.

This helps stratify the market as well, because those who travel light (mainly business people and people who fly a lot) now pay less than they used to. Those who fly irregularly (i.e., tourists) are more willing to pay the fees.

>Is the airline industry disrupt-able enough for market forces to make changes?

It has been disrupted already ... many times. Some disruptions came as a result of relaxation of certain regulations, such as allowing twin engine jets to fly over the oceans, or not forcing airlines to fly direct routes. There's also the revolution around using deep statistical modeling for capacity and route planning and scheduling. There's the business models of RyanAir and Emirates ... I mean, this industry has changed quite a bit.

Flying is also cheapest AND safest it has ever been (though more uncomfortable). Seems like market forces are working just fine.

> Seems like market forces are working just fine.

Are they though? How come the US doesn't have the equivalent of a Emirates/Singapore quality level airline? You can't tell me there is no demand for that level of service by business folk?

Laymen's explanation - there are a limited number of routes that can physically be established and those who have the routes exhibit rent seeking behavior with only just a small amount of competition. In other words an oligopoly.

Those airlines already exist, and would be eager to operate in USA and provide us with service superior to that provided by domestic carriers. The "market failure" is regulations that prevent foreign carriers from serving domestic routes.

Emirates is a state-owned enterprise and there are a lot of accusations that it's subsidized by the state through below-market borrowing.

Your question is also kind of like asking why HP laptops are lower quality than Apple laptops. Emirates uses its Dubai base to serve primarily lucrative international flights, just like Apple targets the premium end of the market. That doesn't mean that HP is in a market segment without competition, however. Rather, it targets a cost-sensitive portion of the market where people aren't willing to pay extra for quality.

My view is that is the Emiratis want to squander their money on giving at-cost fuel and basically-zero-interest loans to their flag carrier, that's on them.

It's not as though the US air market isn't heavily protected. You'll note that foreign carriers like Emirates can't fly domestic routes. If I fly Qantas to NYC, half the plane gets off in LA and nobody else can get on. Which is part of why "Qantas ticket" is the ancient Yolŋu word for "financial ruin".

> why HP laptops are lower quality than Apple laptops.

So why can I choose to buy either an Apple laptop or an HP one in the US, but don't have the choice to fly on Emirates from Chicago to NYC? I think you missed my point entirely. There is a market of people willing to pay for superior quality airline service, there is just no supply for it, because of regulation.

We don't have it due to the business culture of America.

They're agressively seeking to increase profit margins.

That meant that expensing has stripped away the ability to book business class tickets. (That is arguable if that's a good idea or not given the complexity of tickets)

The aggressiveness about seeking higher profit margins at all costs has also meant that the money that would be available for those things are considered to be "fat".

The closest that you have with the Singapore/Emirates setup is United Polaris and Global Services.

> The closest that you have with the Singapore/Emirates setup is United Polaris and Global Services.

Please tell me you're joking.

Emirates is a state owned enterprise, extensively subsidized by the state which has another reason for existing -- similar to El Al.

I think the 'safest' part is due to regulation, not market forces.

Regulations are certainly part of the story, but make no mistake, regulation don't work without market buy-in. If a regulation stands in opposition to market forces it will fail miserably. For example, car fuel efficiency regulations tend to lead to cheating, and non-compliance (which leads to non-enforcement because regulators give up on them) if they stray too far from reality. Furthermore regulations don't innovate. It took aviation engineers to design and build super-safe passenger jets, and airlines (along with engineers) to maintain them - bureaucrats don't do any of that. But yes, regulations have a place.

The FAA and the NTSB are the reason there is market buy-in to begin with. Consumers would never have adopted air travel and driven global economies of scale to the extent that they have without those two agencies reassuring the public that they wouldnt go up in a giant fireball along with 200 others just to go to Cabo.

>It took aviation engineers to design and build super-safe passenger jets, and airlines (along with engineers) to maintain them - bureaucrats don't do any of that.

Companies won't do that unless forced to by regulations. Also, your post that I replied to implied that it was all market forces.

>Companies won't do that unless forced to by regulations.

Even if you were to take a cyncical view that companies don't care about people, they sure as heck would not want to lose a $300 million plane.

I'm not arguing against the utility of regulations. I'm saying don't overstate it.

Companies don't care about people, for one and for two, the problem is that safety is one of those things that companies will gladly brush right against the edge of for the sake of profits.

To draw a point of comparison many companies know that their infrastructure is vulnerable to hacking or data leaks. The reason why they don't fix the problem in the first place is because they've ran the cost analysis and realized that the cost of securing their system is more than the potential ramifications of losing customer data.

> Even if you were to take a cyncical view that companies don't care about people, they sure as heck would not want to lose a $300 million plane.

If safety didn't matter, you might have $200 million planes with a 3% chance of crashing during their service life.

Nobody 'wants' to lose equipment, but optimizing for zero crashes ever is not done for cost reasons.

Not really. Market forces should have forced the airlines to kill TSA long ago.

Also I am not sure how you quantify safety. Overall it may have increased, but nobody ever shot a buik missile against my car and got away with it.

It has been:

1. Wow, WizzAir, and Norweigan air has created a lot of competition on the airline front and price wars. EDIT: Forgot to mention their point to point system has also benefited many towns that wouldn't dream of traveling to Europe.

I've flow with Norwegian Air and I actually liked them. They're like the Southwest of transatlantic flights. The legacy carrier's response has been "we'll just lower our prices" and decrease benefits on all sides. (I.e. basic econ)

2. The newer carriers have had the money to lease new airplanes that are much more fuel efficient. I think that's where the legacy carriers have done does bad planning for the last decade. (They're just not buying 787s and they're depending on ERJ/CRJs)

Problem is those low cost carriers also huge prices away. They’re not always that much cheaper than the legacy carriers - especially if you’re looking at premium econ.

Depends. I frequently see after the flight is priced out. Norweigan+partners can outprice the legacy carriers. Many times they're exactly the same price. Sometime's they're a better value. (I'm looking at Southwest's ticket flexibility as a standard feature)

Market forces have made changes. They've pretty much demonstrated that people make decisions based on the cheapest base fare. So the airlines have mostly (and even the newer airlines have moved in this direction over time) added baggage fees, board early fees, significant change fees, seat selection fees, etc.

The frequent fliers are mostly immune to all this and the family visiting grandma is often going to pick the absolute cheapest flight.

Southwest has continued to grow over decades of airline bankruptcies, mergers, and pricing shenanigans. If you are a first class or business traveler, that is what the other airlines are focusing on, go with them. If you are just a regular flyer, southwest focuses on your demographic. Things they do that almost no other US carrier does. Two checked bags are free, good to cheapest fares, same price whether you buy a one-way or round trip, cancel your flight anytime and get full credit for it on your next purchase. These are great features I use all the time. I always fly them if they have non-stop flights to where I need to go.

>They've pretty much demonstrated that people make decisions based on the cheapest base fare.

Nope. For example the business sector market doesn't necessarily look for cheapest fares. For that market (which is quite big) there are other considerations, like minimizing layovers, in-flight comfort, lounge access, priority boarding, etc.

Yes, I should have said mainstream personal travel. As someone who travels mostly on business, I'm not the one picking the absolutely cheapest base fee.

On the other hand, those business travelers mostly don't even care about early boarding or baggage fees anyway because they're either expensing them or get them for free because of status.

You are very fortunate. I often flew trans-Atlantic for a former company and their travel secretary was under instructions to find the absolute cheapest fare without consideration. So I occasionally ended-up with weird connections in Manchester or Newark instead of a non-stop from Dublin.

Economy class, of course.

Not entirely - in-flight wifi, extra legroom, lie-flat business class, and seatback-controllable entertainment & food service are innovations that have spread across the industry because carriers found that customers will switch airlines to get access to them. In many cases they're even moneymakers, with customers willing to pay extra for them.

I think that the industry has generally found that price-discrimination is a powerful tool, though. The business traveler flying Sydney<->SFO on the corporate dime will pay the extra several thousand for lie-flat seats; the upper-middle-class family with bored kids will pay for wifi and tablet holders; but keeping those (and baggage, prime seat selection, early check-in, etc.) optional keeps flying accessible to the working-class laborer who needs to fly home for a funeral.

Fully agree. We're really seeing two divergent trends.

Fees for everything for the price-sensitive masses.

And, for business travelers with status (who are at a minimum less price sensitive and typically don't pay most of the base level fees anyway), somewhat better seating as a perk, much better seating for upgrades/upsells, a premium class of airline clubs among the base level (e.g. United's Polaris Clubs), etc.

And, as you say, I don't really have a problem with all this because it makes flying much more affordable for those that find the most bargain economy ticket a big expense. While I might personally enjoy it more, you don't really want a world where lie-flat seats are required on all 5+ hour flights.

I'd argue that Southwest already did so.

This fall I recently started flying again after having not flown since 1999, and I've been making it a point to only fly Southwest because they're the only airline that's even remotely consumer friendly.

Alaska is also quite consumer friendly, in my experience.

Southwest is a pretty great experience.

I wish I could use them more.

The opposite of "monopoly" is not "disruption" but instead "competition." Disruption moves a market equilibrium, usually due to a fundamental change in technology. But even a market in a steady-state equilibrium are subject to market forces so long as they are sufficiently competitive.

E.g. Amazon is disrupting retail. But even before Amazon existed, retail was highly competitive, with market forces driving down prices. (Indeed, there is a good argument that Amazon is decreasing competition even as it disrupts the market.)

Monopoly means one.

Not in the legal sense, it doesn't

I remember flying under the old heavily regulated airline system, where the FAA set routes, etc. Flights were often half empty. That practically never happens now. Flights are much more convenient and cheaper as a result.

>> this is one of those things that the market should decide.

The market can only decide when consumers are fully informed of the charges before they purchase the ticket. If Expedia modifies their web site to ask if you have baggage and adds baggage fees to the displayed total then consumers are fully informed.

> this is one of those things that the market should decide

It's easy to see that airlines are being too greedy here and taking benefit of no option left for customer. It's not market price as most people just look for the cheapest ticket. After buying it, it's basically a monopoly.

I really wish they'd charge for carry-ons and make checkins free. I hate travelling in American where people are rushing into the plane, hauling huge suitcases. Flying in Asia recently was bliss without these huge bags in the overhead bins.

True. Restricting which things an airline can charge for or not creates dead-weight loss.

Personally, I like when airlines charge a reasonable amount for seat selection. I get really claustrophobic being on the inside seat, so with airlines that charge for it, I always get an aisle seat which is worth more to me than the money. And then people who don't care at all get a slightly subsidized ticket and sit in the middle/window seat.

I agree, right now there are a plethora of upgrades from a base ticket. Things like, checked-baggage, priority boarding, emergency row / extra leg-room, etc.

There were times when I sprung for priority boarding or emergency row seating, and times where I didn't - and in both cases, I appreciated the option. Let people decide if they care enough about extra leg room that they are willing to throw and that extra $30 for the better seat versus not (because if free, EVERYONE would want extra leg room).

I think the shocking part is these regulations being generally pro-passenger and not another lobbyist authored money grab.

Maybe legislation like this is passed and signed all the time, but it seems shocking to me because all of the articles I read are about laws bought and paid for by one lobbying group or another.

> I'm glad. I don't like paying baggage fees (in fact, I've started to travel much more with only a carry-on partly to avoid the fees) but this is one of those things that the market should decide.

Yeah, that sounds like a classic case of "not my problem, therefore it shouldn't be regulated".

If some group of passagers have no choice but to fly and also have a hard minimum of baggage they need, there is no market force to keep baggage prices low. So a pure market solution would have them climb ever higher.

> It's an extra revenue stream for airlines

The original rationale for baggage fees is that added baggage makes plane operation more expensive. I guess, treating it as an "extra revenue stream" is at least honest, but is something that can be justified a lot less in regards if usefulness for society.

If you don’t live near a major hub, there is about as much of a “market” for which airline you can fly to get to your destination as there is your ISP.

I don't care about baggage fees but they should be required to advertise the real price upfront and not add a ton of charges later.

Everything should be transparent, so that when people search for flights, they should enter how much checked baggage they want, and all the prices they see will reflect that.

Given two flights A and B, it could be the case that A is cheaper for the person who doesn't want checked luggage, whereas B is cheaper for someone who wants to check in a suitcase.

Agreed. I strongly dislike Trump, but this bill seems very reasonable, some pretty run-of-the-mill regulations that most people would agree with, or at least be OK with.

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