Good airline fees? Some are worth the money

Elite treatment: A fee that allows you to get preferential treatment without having to spend half of your life on a plane is a pretty good deal.

That’s what readers like Jennifer Rigdon have told me. She recently tried Southwest Airlines’ new EarlyBird program, which lets you cut to the front of the boarding line for an extra $10 per flight. (Other airlines let you use their lounges or elite check-in and screening lines for a fee, too.) “I’ll definitely do it again,” she told me. “It’s more reasonable than the upgrade to Business Select, and for $20 I think it’s worth it.”

How about the bad ones?

Seat and reservation fees: I’ve already touched on these ugly surcharges. Permit me to beat the horse until it’s dead: Schemes that defraud passengers of $15 to sit in a more desirable economy class seat, or that force them to pay for a confirmed reservation, are utterly wrong.

Laura Wilcox, an event planner in Orlando, paid $15 for a window seat on a recent Delta Air Lines flight from Detroit to Orlando. “But when I got on the plane my seat was filled because another passenger was displaced — people go crazy to sit together as families on the Orlando flights,” she says. The airline never returned her $15.

These seat fees aren’t right because you’re paying for something twice: once for the ticket, once for the seat reservation. Aren’t they one and the same?

Convenience fees: Paying to pay is, as I’ve mentioned earlier, outright immoral. And it’s not just Allegiant and Spirit playing this fool’s game. Most of the big airlines charge extra to book by phone, another form of “convenience” fee.

Henry Harteveldt, Forrester Research’s travel analyst, believes convenience fees for credit card payments are about to spread to other airlines. That would be bad news for air travelers.

Luggage fees and other nonsense surcharges: You know a silly fee when you see one. Unfortunately, most airlines don’t.

Sharon Strelzer, a marketing manager from Fairfield, Conn., says the recent moves to start charging for the first checked bag are just impractical, given the TSA’s liquid and gel limits. She also considers seat reservation fees to be out of line, and I’ve spoken with others who would include charges for soft drinks, and especially for potable water. “The airlines should raise the rates $50 or so and be done with the nonsense fees,” she says.

Actually, not a bad idea. But carriers know that nothing sells seats like a low fare, so they’re not going for it. Until they do, these absurd surcharges will probably keep popping up everywhere.

In a perfect world, if enough airline passengers paid for the right fees and avoided the wrong ones, then market forces would compel airlines to do the right thing. But it’s not a perfect world. Some carriers have a near-monopoly in certain cities, making it difficult for markets to operate the way they’re supposed to.

Jim Goyjer, a Los Angeles-base marketing consultant and experienced air traveler, believes more drastic actions are needed. “Since deregulation of the airlines, service and quality have suffered,” he told me. On his preferred carrier, American Airlines, “almost all” of the seasoned cabin crew don’t like the company anymore. They blame top executives for mismanagement and greed, he told me. “They hate nickel and diming the passengers,” he added. “They feel more like vendors and waiters and waitresses than professionals.”

“We need to re-regulate the airlines,” he says.

Now there’s an idea.