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Dayton
Business Journal...
New
legislation to limit airline bag
fees
by Chris Bagley, Staff Writer
Friday, November 25, 2011
A
new bill proposed in the U.S. Senate
would limit airline baggage fees, which have become a major gripe for
travelers
but are a leading source of profit for the industry.
Sen.
Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana)
introduced a bill that would prevent airlines from charging a fee on
the first
checked bag, according to a prepared statement her office released
Tuesday, the
eve of one of the busiest travel days on the nation’s calendar. The
statement
said Landrieu plans to introduce additional legislation to authorize
fees on
airlines that don’t comply with the one-free-bag requirement.
“Many
airlines consider checking a bag
not to be a right, but a privilege,” Landrieu said in the statement.
Domestic
carriers collected nearly
$3.4 billion in baggage fees in 2010, according to the U.S. Department
of
Transportation. Those fees accounted for only about 2 percent of their
total
operating revenue but represented a big slice of their $7.7 billion in
net
earnings.
The
industry reported net earnings of
about $4 billion between January 2009 and June 2011, according to a
Triangle
Business Journal analysis of data from the federal agency; subtracting
out the
$7.8 billion in baggage fees collected during those 10 quarters would
have left
the industry with a multi-billion-dollar loss.
The
fees have become an unpleasant
reality for passengers. While the Air Transport Association has
said only about one in four passengers
end up paying a baggage fee, the fees still affect passengers who
travel
lighter and cram oversized carry-on bags into overhead bins. After
those bins
fill up, further carry-ons are taken down the stairs into the cargo
hold (and
are often exempt from baggage fees).
Not
all major airlines would be
affected by Landrieu’s bills. Southwest Airlines
(NYSE: LUV), which starts flying out of
Dayton International Airport
soon as a
result of its merger with AirTran Holdings
, allows passengers two checked bags free of
charge. JetBlue
(Nasdaq: JBLU) allows one.
Delta
Air Lines (NYSE:
DAL), one of the airport’s busiest
carriers, collected $903 million in revenue from baggage fees between
July 2010
and June 2011, more than any other carrier, according to the federal
agency.
American Airlines
(NYSE: AMR
), followed with $593 million in
baggage-fee revenue collected nationally. Behind those two was US
Airways (NYSE:
LCC), with $503 million in baggage
fees.
Landrieu
has dubbed the bill the
Airline Passenger BASICS Act, for “Basic Airline Standards to Improve
Customer
Satisfaction.” While the statement from Landrieu’s office says that she
has
introduced the legislation, several searches of the Senate’s website
turned up
nothing under that name. Calls to Landrieu’s four offices in Louisiana
and her
office in Washington went unanswered. Her staff didn’t immediately
reply to an
e-mail.
Several
recent bills similar to
Landrieu’s have been mere blips on the congressional radar. The Baggage
Fee
Fairness Act of 2010, which would have required refunds of fees on
lost,
delayed and damaged baggage, was routed into a subcommittee a couple of
weeks
after its introduction by Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Massachusetts), and
remained
in a holding pattern for the rest of the session.
Capuano’s
Baggage Fee Fairness Act of
2011 met a similar fate. Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-Montana) Four Free Bags
for
Freedom Act would prevent airlines from charging baggage fees to
members of the
military traveling to certain overseas operations. It was introduced in
August,
assigned to the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science and
Transportation, and
has circled there without a vote for nearly four months.
Read
this and other articles at the
Dayton Business Journal
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