A New Airline Fee Infuriates Passengers
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Your Money Matters from The Wall Street Journal. Welcome to Your Money Matters. I'm J.R. Whalen in New York. What infuriates air travelers more than cramped seating? It's fees. And airlines have a new fee to add to passengers' pain. Wall Street Journal Middle Street columnist Scott McCartney joins us with details. So, Scott, not only does an additional airline fee add to the frustration felt by passengers, but you write in your column that many of them who buy the basic economy fare... Really never saw this one coming.
Yeah, that's right. It gets so confusing that it's really hard to figure out what you're supposed to do as a passenger. When you buy a basic economy fare on United and American, you don't get to put a bag in the overhead bin. Now you do if you're an elite level frequent flyer or you have an airline sponsored credit card.
What new gate handling fee are airlines charging basic-economy passengers?
And you do on Delta with basic economy, but you but you don't otherwise on United and American. OK, fine. That gets disclosed. And, you know, you're going to have to pay the bag fee, but you bring your carry on bag to the gate and. You know, some people may realize they're going to have to pay the fee at the gate. Some people may not and may have missed that, not read all the terms and conditions. But if you bring that back to the gate, you're also going to have to pay what United calls a gate handling charge. and what American calls a gate service fee. And this is essentially a penalty on top of a fee. So you pay your $25 checked bag fee to check the bag if it's your first bag, $35 if it's your second bag on a domestic flight.
And then you also have to pay the $25 penalty. And you don't have to pay it if you happen to check the bag at the ticket counter. It's all on where you are checking the bag. And this gets down to, you know, airlines imposing penalties to try and drive passenger behavior. But, you know, for many people, this is, man, they have brought carry-on bags to the gate forever and ever and ever. And now you're telling them they have to check in the lobby and not at the gate. It's really confusing and frustrating some passengers who get hit with this fee. drive passenger behavior. They're driving them up a wall is what it sounds like. Yeah, no, I think that's right. There's a micromanagement aspect to this that, you know, we want you to check your bag at this point and not at that point.
And that's different from every other time you've had to get on an airplane. And it's because we sold you a different fare that But we called that fare basic. But, you know, many of us think basic means, you know, kind of the the the basic stuff that we've been buying and coach for years and years and years.
How does basic economy differ between United, American and Delta on carry-on rules?
There's a difference between basic and bare bones or or basic. And somebody said, well, they ought to call it third class because, you know, you have fewer rights and privileges than than other coach passengers. I think the name can even be confusing and misleading.
So passengers going for the basic economy fare think that, you know, I'm going to beat the system a little bit here because I've got a good bare bones fare. But the lesson here is there really is no such thing as a free lunch, right?
Yeah, I think so. I think so. You know, it's really tricky. If you buy basic economy on an airline website, they do a pretty good job of disclosing it. You know, you're going to have to look pretty hard. Now, you may not drill down far enough to find the gate service fee. You may, you know, may be pretty clear to you that you can't bring an overhead bag on and you're going to have to check the bag. Not necessarily so clear where you have to check the bag. But if you're if you're buying if you're searching on, you know, orbits or Travelocity or Expedia or Google flights or, you know, any one of dozens and dozens of flight search stuff. It gets really tricky because the basic economy fares are going to be cheaper than regular coach fares.
They're going to show up first in the display. If you look on Google flights, there may be some faint wording there that says basic economy, but you're really not going to know what you're in for.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–0:57
2
What new gate handling fee are airlines charging basic-economy passengers?
0:57–2:59
3
How does basic economy differ between United, American and Delta on carry-on rules?
2:59–6:41
4
Why do passengers get hit with both a bag fee and a gate service penalty?
6:41–9:13
Speakers
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