The airlines in America have set upon a course of purposely confusing passengers with hidden fees, arcane frequent flier exceptions to these fees and new bundling of airline fees. Their stated goal is to keep the airfares as low as possible in order to remain on the first pages of travel website displays and appear as the best value.
However, when hidden fees are added in at the end of the process, the published airfares are nothing more than a cruel and costly bait and switch tactic. This is not anything that I have brilliantly deciphered over the years, but exactly what the airlines have confessed to doing. Airline fee complexity makes comparing prices more difficult than ever.
My big question — Why is the Department of Transportation letting them get away with this duplicitous tactic?
Airline executives and marketing gurus are honest about wanting to display the lowest possible airfare across all online and computer reservation systems. Their point of view is that clicks on flights appearing more than one or two pages in a search for best airfares are rare.
In order to keep an airline’s listings high in the display of an aggregating site such as kayak.com and mobissimo.com and in more traditional online travel agencies such as expedia, travelocity, orbitz and priceline, airlines consciously work to keep airfares as inexpensive as possible. Airlines to date have declined to even inform these aggregators and online travel agents of the cost of ancillary fees such as seat reservations, extra legroom, exit-row seats, baggage, etc.
Even the travel agent on the corner is kept in the dark about airline fees. Passengers who want to explore airline fees must go to airline sites and search for various fees or discover them by surprise on the phone and at the airport when attempting to check in or make a change to a ticket.
All airline propaganda aside, fees are not clearly displayed even on airline websites. I defy anyone to figure out the change fees associated with various airline tickets on American Airlines’ aa.com. I cannot find that information nor can specialists such as Christopher Muise, one of the founders of truprice.com, who searches for airline fees every day.
TruPrice.net has not been able to establish that AA publishes a $150 change fee. Just the opposite. Of the 17 major US carriers, AA is the only airline whose ticket change fee, according to their own language, varies depending on several factors.
Directly from AA.com: Change fees/penalties may vary by markets and fare basis types. Change fees/penalties are published in conjunction with each fare basis. If several different fares are used to construct an itinerary, it is feasible that each leg of travel may have a different change fee/penalty. Further from AA.com: Change Fee Travel within/Between 50 U.S./Puerto Rico/U.S. Virgin Islands, And Transborder U.S./Canada or, to/from Hawaii. Check Fare Rules. Change Fees Vary. Once a ticket has been reissued, the new issue date will determine the change fee amount.
The only reference I could find anywhere on AA about the $150 change fee is: Travelers can save $75 off the regular $150 charge (when applicable) when a change is made to a ticketed reservation. While AA may indeed impose a strict $150 change fee, I have been unable to pinpoint where it is distinctly identified.
Every other carrier in the US has specific language on change fees that can be found on truprice.net. We have been unable to publish a specific fee for AA because of the language above.
Truprice.net is one of the few sites where consumers can go to search for airline fees, however, even they offer no guarantee that their fees are accurate and all warn that the airlines can change these fees at any time. Plus, many fees can only be paid through the airline websites.
The airline claim that they are maintaining their marketing prerogatives. They argue that any business is allowed to market its product as it sees fit. By unbundling airfares into different fees and then by reassembling these fees into new consumer fee packages, the airlines bluster that they are providing customers more choice and an opportunity to save money on portions of the airline product that they do not use.
My question to the airlines: If these fees are such a gift to passengers and if they save the average passenger lots of money, why do the airlines continue to hide these fees and make it difficult to compare the total cost of travel?
I would hope if the airlines honestly believe that airline fees are about providing the flying public the services they want at a fair price, they will join us in urging DOT to mandate full disclosure of airline fees and work proactively with travel agents and GDSs to make all fees transparent and allow transactions for these fees to be made at any place that sells airfares.
Passengers who want to comment on the pending DOT rulemaking that aims to mandate airlines reveal all fees so that consumers can compare the total cost of travel should go to regulationroom.org and add their comments to this site created through a public/private partnership between DOT and Cornell University. These comments will be collected and consolidated for entry into the regulation.gov docket.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
