Airline fees are irritating, especially those fees that go up for one reason but never seem to come down when that reason shifts course. I’m talking oil prices and fuel surcharges.
Over the summer the price of oil has dropped around 10 percent. How many of have seen the oil surcharges drop an appropriate amount? I sure haven’t, nor have any columnists that I know either.
I don’t begrudge the airlines a fair profit. I don’t argue with airfare increases that are necessary, but the airlines have developed a stealth mode of price increases and seem to think that pulling wool over the traveling public’s eyes is the proper way to do business.
The bottom line — oil dropped in price again yesterday and fuel surcharges have not budged.
While surcharges have been instituted and have not been reduced, the price of oil over the summer has slid from around $114 a barrel to around $75 a barrel and now sits around $90 a barrel. Any way you measure the price of oil or jet fuel, it is a moving target. That is the reason for a fuel surcharge — so that prices can change because of extraordinary circumstances. These surcharges are a means to allow airfares to remain unaffected while a single cost fluctuates.
I never liked the system, but it seemed to have a logical reason for being. The only problem seems to be is that these costs fluctuate up and never seem to fluctuate down when the reason for the underlying surcharge increase of the surcharge drops in price.
Every day, I hear the moaning and groaning about how airline airfares are still cheaper than they were a decade ago and what a great bargain airline travel is compared to the days of yore. But, those figures don’t take into account the scores of new airline fees that passengers are being charged. They blatantly do not include baggage fees, seat reservation fees, reservation fees and more that used to be part of the concept of an airline ticket.
I’m sorry. I have no compassion for the struggling airline industry. Their economic woes are of their own making. Here is an industry that has been coddled by the government. They have been given emergency loans. They have an example of an airline that seems able to make money every quarter, year after year. But, they never seem to change.
Fuel surcharges that evidently have nothing to do with fuel costs are only the current irritant. Pocketing tax money that should have gone to the public, hiding ancillary fees, charging exorbitant change and cancellation fees and other transgressions allow for continued passenger griping.
Plus, it seems to me that something is wrong when management of airlines finds itself in battles with their customers, their workers, their distributors and their suppliers all at the same time.
Will they ever get the message and learn to play nice in the world of commerce? It doesn’t seem that way.
Photo: ©Leocha
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.
