Sky-High Airline Fees Under Fire: Senate Hearing Set for Dec. 4 

United States: A U.S. Senate panel on Tuesday said it will address increasing airline charges for allocating seats and carrying baggage, with carriers’ chief executives due to attend on Dec. 4. 

Hearing Scheduled 

Senator Richard Blumenthal, the chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, will preside over a hearing called” The Sky’s the Limit – New Revelations About Airline Fees,” with executives of American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines Spirit Air and Frontier scheduled to appear, as reported by Reuters

$12.4 Billion in Fees Over Five Years 

His report exposed that the five airlines made $12.4 bln in seat fee sales between 2018-2023 and stated that in the last year, United made $1.3 bln in seat fees, more than the $1.2 bln taken in checked baggage fees, according to the report.

Use of Algorithms and Fee Classification 

Blumenthal’s panel investigation merely took one year and discovered that carriers were employing algorithms to set fees, a move that saw them target the prices based on customer information; some carriers, the committee noted, might be avoiding federal transportation excise taxes by categorizing some charges as nontaxable fees. 

His committee said that ultra-low-cost carriers Frontier and Spirit Airlines paid $26 million to gate agents and others between 2022 and 2023 in an effort to catch passengers they claimed were not paying for bag fees or carrying oversized items. 

Frontier personnel can earn as much as $10 for each bag a passenger is forced to check at the gate, the report found. 

Frontier said: “The commission for gate agents is simply designed to incentivize our team members to ensure compliance with bag size requirements so that all customers are treated equally and fairly.” Spirit and United did not comment. 

Industry Pushback on Transparency 

Airlines for America, an industry lobby group, stated that the manner that the optional charges given that customers may opt not to accept, if we average domestic round-trip fares, including fees, at 929 US dollars in 2023 real terms, were, however down 14% in 2010. 

Delta stated that it aims to “offer the type of fares that best suits a given customer’s travel requirements.” 

Call for New Regulations 

Blumenthal noted that Congress should impose new rules for better fee disclosures from the airlines. He stated that the USDOT needs to explore further abuses in incentive-based collection fees, as reported by Reuters. 

Airline organizations sued to prevent USDOT from implementing a new regulation that requires airlines to reveal all their fees before purchasing a ticket, and in 2018, the major US airlines’ CEOs effectively pressured lawmakers to shelve a bill that would allow passengers to demand “reasonable and proportional” aviation charges for baggage and other changes.