Airline passengers think that their ticket gives them the right to have themselves and their luggage transported to their destination. They are wrong on both counts. Most recently, the legacy carriers have now imposed a twenty-five dollar charge for the checking of a second bag.
Chris Elliott, in his blog, commented that United’s chief revenue officer said that the bag surcharge would allow it to offer competitive fares while generating more than $100 million in revenue and cost savings each year. Elliott called on United to perhaps use some of that money to install an RFID-based luggage tracking system.
If you’re paying more than it costs to ship a parcel across the country to check your luggage, isn’t it reasonable to expect an airline to track and find your bag when it’s lost instead of sending it to the unclaimed baggage center to be sold after conducting a halfhearted search?
Bags are lost every day. A New York Times article from November reports that the printers that print bag tags often become dirty, resulting in harder to read barcodes and misdirected bags. Even with regular cleaning, barcode readers are only 90 to 92 percent accurate. And as fewer employees are handling more bags, the system becomes overloaded.
Of the six traditional carriers, only American has not imposed this fee. Continental, US Airways, United, Delta, and Northwest now charge. Ben Mutzabaugh of USAToday’s Today in the Sky commented the most important question in our minds:
With the declining ability of airlines to successfully deliver bags to their destination, airlines have not addressed what it means if you pay for the bag and they still lose it. IATA regulations cap liability limits at $1500 for international flights, $3000 for domestic in the United States. But if there a greater liability if they lose the bag? And if they do, and it is returned, do they owe you a refund of your $25? We would think they would, but it will take a test case to establish this precedent.
In the meantime, we wonder about the practice of being concerned about extra pieces of luggage. European low-cost carriers work on a system of total weight. Most US airlines impose a 50lb per bag limit. But if you need to transport two 25 pound bags, as opposed to one 50 pound bag…you are charged the same as 100lbs.
Multiple bags are admittedly increased points of failure, but since the supposed major cost of bag transport is weight to fuel costs, not handling, one would think they would adopt a total weight system, and charge less for processing. It would certainly be more equitable.