A Staggering Look at Baggage Fees
blog.hipmunk.com
blog.hipmunk.com
You could argue that the level of service isn't commensurate with what you'd get on a Delta or AA so its not the same product - but I'd say personally that my experiences with Southwest are far more pleasant than my dealings with any of the others.
edit: s/fare/far (pun notwithstanding)
The people who would argue this are probably the ones who also earned status on a legacy carrier before they started really turning the screws on people in 2008, and thus have been immune to all the bag charges and seat fees all along.
But, if you have no status on AA/Delta/United, you'll probably find you'd get a better level of service on Southwest, at least based on my experiences from having flown them recently.
First off, baggage fees are now tax free. That gives a huge incentive to maximize increases there.
Second, consumers will simply pick a flight based on lowest cost, not realizing the exorbitant baggage fees. Regular business customers will either already be using carry-on only, or the business will eat the cost. Consumers usually don't fly that much, so they'll fall prey to the misdirection, probably forget by the time they fly again, and will likely consider x bags a necessity.
This has to rank as the stupidest IRS decision of all time.
http://www.theupsstore.com/products/Documents/LuggageBoxInfo...
jetblue and southwest don't charge for the first bag specifically because of this. their processes are optimized on the assumption that you're going to check one bag. it helps them to get more flights in per day, when people can get to their seats and they can get the plane in the air faster.
it might actually do well to provide a ticket discount if you check a bag, in order to ensure that there are limited delays. but that would require an airline to care, and most don't seem to.
For example, Delta had $28B in 2009 revenues compared with $482M in baggage fees, for just under 2% of total revenues.
As a side note, as long as you can get your bag through the xray scanner you should just bring it to the gate. They may not let you carry it on, but there's no fee for gate-checked bags.
If consumer groups succeed in limiting airlines' ability to charge such fees, airlines will need to figure out other ways to monetize your travel, some that may be more difficult avoid.
It seems like a textbook example of executives, more inclined to travel with golf bags, exempting themselves from the rules.
Given the financial collapse, I wouldn't be surprised if the airlines are hurting and need to pull money from somewhere.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2010/06/airline_prof...
Airlines had been steadily losing money from 9/11 up to 2009, except for a few low-cost carriers.
You're obviously doing great work with your graphics, but you still have work to do...
On the main page, the letters and numbers are impossibly small to read.
On the "high-rez goodness", too much horizontal and vertical scrolling are needed.
The "SUPER high-rez version" is the worst of both worlds, too small to read when within a single window and to much to scroll when magnified.
Here's my challenge to your own resident Chief Scientist:
Give me the same easily discernible information that uses my screen, my whole screen, and nothing but my screen, so help me Tufte.
Thanks for the feedback! We're still not at Good/Mint-caliber infographics, but we hope to get there: http://www.good.is/infographics
[The almost NSFW ads at the bottom of the page were a nice little perk for a drudge-work Tuesday, too.]
The $23 instead of $25 each way must be the online discount