How airline charges have turned baggage into billions | EUROtoday

With Air Canada and Southwest the most recent airways to cost passengers for check-in baggage, the ballooning price of such ancillary or “junk fees” is upsetting anger amongst politicians and client teams. At the identical time, gross sales of suitcases sufficiently small for passengers to tackle the airplane as hand baggage are booming.

Standing exterior Toronto’s downtown airport, Lauren Alexander has flown over from Boston for the weekend. She describes such further expenses as “ridiculous”.

“It feels like a trick,” says the 24-year-old. “You buy the ticket, you think it’s going to be less expensive, then you have to pay $200 (£148) extra [to bring a suitcase].”

To keep away from the price, Ms Alexander as an alternative travelled with a small backpack as hand baggage.

Sage Riley, who’s 27, agrees, telling the BBC, “It can be pricey.”

There was a time when checked baggage, seat choice and your meals all got here as normal on business flights. But that each one modified with the rise of the finances airways, says Jay Sorensen of US aviation consultancy IdeaWorks.

It was in 2006 when UK low-cost provider FlyBe turned what’s believed to be the world’s first airline to start out charging passengers to test in baggage. It charged £2 for a pre-booked merchandise of bags, and £4 if the client hadn’t paid prematurely.

Other finances carriers then rapidly adopted swimsuit, with the so-called flag carriers or established airways then additionally doing so, a minimum of on shorter flights.

In 2008 American Airlines turned the primary US airline to cost a price, $15, for the primary checked bag on its home routes.

Mr Sorenson says such conventional airways felt they’d no selection once they “began to realise that the low-cost carriers were providing very significant competition”. He provides: “They felt they had to do something to meet that.”

Fast ahead to immediately, and US airways alone made $7.27bn from check-in baggage charges final yr, in response to federal figures. That is up from $7bn in 2023, and $5.76bn in 2019.

Little marvel then that extra of us try to simply take carry-on. Kirsty Glenn, managing director of UK baggage agency Antler, confirms that there’s an ongoing surge in demand for small suitcases that meet airline dimension limits for carry-on baggage.

“We have seen huge spikes in searches online and on our website,” she says. Describing a brand new small-dimension case her firm launched in April, Ms Glenn provides: “Testament to the trend of only travelling with hand luggage, it’s sold like crazy.”

At the identical time, social media content material about journey packing “hacks” and baggage that meets airways’ carry-on dimension measurements, have soared in response to journey journalist Chelsea Dickenson. She makes this content material for TikTook.

“Social media has really propelled this idea of needing a bag that fits the baggage allowance requirements, says Ms Dickenson. “It’s grow to be a core a part of the content material that I create and submit on social media.”

Ms Dickenson, whose social media following has ballooned to close to a million followers, adds that her luggage videos have become a “core a part of the content material” she creates.

“It blows my thoughts,” she says. “I might spend weeks and weeks researching an enormous journey, and the ensuing movies is not going to come near doing in addition to me going and shopping for an affordable suitcase, taking it to the airport, testing it in a kind of baggage sizes and reporting again.”

The overall global cost of all airline extra fees, from luggage to seat selection, buying wifi access, lounge access, upgrades, and food and drink, is expected to reach $145bn this year, 14% of the sector’s total revenues. That’s according to the International Air Transport Association, which represents the industry. This compares with $137bn last year.

These numbers have caught the attention of some politicians in Washington, and last December airline bosses were grilled before a senate committee. It was a Democrat senator who used the term “junk charges”.

He wants the federal government to review such costs and potentially fine airlines. We asked the US Department of Transportation for a comment, but did not get a response.

But if having to pay for check-in wasn’t enough, a growing number of airlines are now charging for hand luggage. For example, Irish budget airline Ryanair will only allow you to carry a small bag that fits under the seat in front of you for free. If you want to take a bigger bag or suitcase to go in the overhead locker that will cost you from £6.

Other European airlines that now have similar charges for hand luggage are Easyjet, Norwegian Airlines, Transavia, Volotea, Vueling, and Wizzair.

This has annoyed pan-European consumer group Becu (The European Consumer Organisation), which last month filed a complaint with the European Commission.

Becu cites a 2014 EU Court of Justice ruling, which said “carriage of hand baggage can’t be made topic to a worth complement, supplied that it meets affordable necessities by way of its weight and dimensions, and complies with relevant safety necessities”.

However, what determines “affordable necessities” continues to be a grey area in need of an official ruling.

There can, however, be a different way of doing things, as shown by Indian airline IndiGo. Its boss Pieter Eibers says that it does not charge for check-in luggage.

“The complete philosophy right here is totally different,” he says. “We don’t desire lengthy traces, and limitless debates at gates in regards to the weight of bags. We haven’t any of that. We flip our planes round in 35 minutes.”