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Peak Travel

Base airfare is already expensive when flying during peak travel times of the year. Now passengers will need to prepare themselves for an additional $10.00 surcharge for traveling during the holidays. The dates of high demand are the following for 2009 and 2010;

• November 29-30, 2009
• December 19, 2009
• December 16-27, 2009
• January 2-3, 2010
• March 14, 2010
• March 28, 2010
• April 11, 2010
• May 28, 2010

This fee might seem like nothing but can get expensive once you add other airline fees such as secondary baggage and a few other fees listed here. In reality, what business need requires this surcharge? Overworked employees? Doesn’t make sense why a passenger needs to pay this fee as it appears to be another scam (at least to me) for airlines to increase their bottom line.

Pillow & Blankets:

There used to be really cozy and warm blankets that were offered on airplanes for free. The blanket and pillows slowly became replaced with cheaper materials because passengers were probably taking them off the airplane. You can still get these for free on some airlines (even though they might be in limited supplies) but other operators like JetBlue are charging a small fee for the sleep set.

Seat Selection / Leg Room:

It was always a game for me to try to get the exit rows but that was squashed when a few airlines make you pay a small fee to have the luxury of additional leg room. It is pretty common now to see airline operators charge customers either a fee for seat preference or for any seats with increased leg room. I guess airlines that are charging customers should be adding the slogan “Comfort Comes With A Price” to their slogans.

Standby:

So you want to take an earlier flight to the same destination. You’d think that this would be a simple process that wouldn’t require any fee but you would be wrong. All major airplane companies will charge customers an additional fee to be standby on an earlier flight. I always loathed this fee when you can easily see that there open seats on an earlier flight but you are stuck waiting for your original flight that is three hours from boarding.

Food and Snacks:

The food was mostly terrible, unless you sat in First Class, but wasn’t it great to get meals for free when traveling on an airplane? These days are basically over now as most airline operators have removed the free meals and replaced them with pricey snacks. I guess us passengers are forced to purchase food at the airport and reminiscence on those enjoyable days of when airplane food was free while waiting at our boarding gate.

Pets:

Do you have a small cat or dog that you want to bring on the plane? This can also become costly after forking over approximately a one-way fee of $125 dollars. There isn’t much that is done by an airline operator for you to bring a pet in the cabin but they still charge a fee of $250 for a round-trip ticket? It sounds a bit crazy to me be charging this amount. It would be nice to see a portion of this donated to a pet-related charity…at least the donation would be a tax break to keep these airline companies alive.

Booking on Phone or In-Person:

This is one of those fees that make sense to me as companies are relying more and more on the Internet for on-line bookings. It’s much cheaper for an airline to maintain their online booking computer servers instead of fully staffing a department to handle in-person or over the phone booking requests. The only annoying issue can arise from this type of fee is if you are having trouble with your on-line booking and require additional help over the phone.

Security Fees:

This fee was created after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States resulting in increased security at all airports. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) imposed a small fee on passengers in which the airlines will charge but then hand it over to the TSA. In 2008, the TSA reported that they’ve collected $1,920,400,000 throughout the year from this fee. As a citizen of the United States, I can only hope that all the money raised by this fee is going directly towards security measures to protect us from future air travel-related terrorist attacks.

Passenger Facility Charges (PFCs):

This small fee goes to maintaining the airport facility that you just spent a few hours standing in line waiting for your airplane. The humorous side of this is that I’ve only been to a few airports that I thought were very well maintained. The others airports appear to always been in constant repairs, torn seats at boarding gates, stained carpets and missing ceiling tiles. I feel like airport management is just collecting this fee as an increased revenue stream but not spending it on much needed cosmetic repairs.

International Arrival & Departure Tax:

This is a rather old tax that has been applied to our total airfare price since 1997. I was never fond of with this fee as I was able to find really cheap tickets to Calgary, Canada to go heli-skiing for a few days but ended up paying a bit more because of this tax (as well as the secondary baggage fee!). The tough part is that Alaska and Hawaii are pseudo-international locations that also require an arrival and departure tax because of their distance from the rest of the United States.

Unaccompanied Minors:

It’s like paying a babysitter from the airline company to guide unaccompanied minors throughout the airport. This surcharge is very common throughout the industry because of the manpower required to keep an eye on the minor. The best part for the unaccompanied minor is that you get to board the plane first and maybe able to score some free snacks.

Fuel Surcharges:

Airline companies enter into future contracts to attempt to protect (hedge) their bets on the prices of fuel. This caused a bit of a problem for airline companies fuel prices surged in 2007 and 2008. So why not pass the cost onto the consumer? I still feel that this is one of the more evil surcharges considering that the fault is on the companies entering into future contracts that didn’t work out well for them.

Airplane Bathrooms:

Rumor or public relations stunt? I need to give Ryanair some credit for coming up with at least an interesting airline fee surcharge. In a June 2009 New York Times article, Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s Chief Executive, told The Guardian to add a credit-card reader to toilet locks to force passengers to pay $1.50 to use the cramped airplane bathroom. The thought of passengers fumbling for a credit card when in a ‘rush’ makes me laugh…a little.

Additional Luggage and Weight Limits:

The only good thing to come from this surcharge fee is to teach us how to become better at packing our luggage. I do have a basic understanding for airline companies charging passengers for additional luggage considering the added weight to the plane. The additional weight might seem immaterial but if multiplied by one hundred passengers it becomes a different story. That additional weight could require the airplane to use a bit more expensive jet fuel. While I hate this surcharge, it does have some merit.

Antlers:

This is a great fee just because it sounds funny at face value. I guess a lot of hunters go on vacations and want to bring their hunting trophies home so they can be mounted above a fire place. These antlers can get pretty massive and will take up precious cargo space within the plane. This is why a couple airlines, including Frontier Airlines (now owned by Republic Airways as of the article post date), to charge a hefty fee for these to be stored in the plane.

The exact amounts can vary as the economy changes and airlines compete against each other. If you are looking for detailed information on the exact price for these taxes, surcharges and fees, I recommend you check out your airlines website or Kayak’s Airline Fees.

Budget Airline to Charge for Toilet Use (New York Times)