More on luggage “shipping costs” by the airlines

The more I ponder this, the more irritated I get.

United expects that “only” a third of its domestic fliers will be impacted by this fee. The two exempt groups are:

1. Day-trippers, or folks who are flying for only a night or two, i.e., who only need carry-on. 
2. Premiere “frequent flier” travelers.

Both of the above are almost exclusively business travelers. And for those business travelers who have more? Well, heck, they just “expense” it.

Who does that leave? “Pleasure” travelers, folks going on vacation, families traveling, etc. They’re the ones adding $30 r/t for a single bag, another $100 r/t for another bag, etc. And, of course, the charges for “overweight” bags are going up, too.

Margie and I are lucky here, insofar as 90% of our family travel (at least) is to family in Southern California, and we’ve stockpiled sufficient clothing and toiletries there that we really don’t need to bring much luggage when we go (excluding Katherine, who outgrows anything we leave behind, but her clothes tend to be small enough to put in a carry-on).

At the holidays, we usually use suitcases to carry gifts that we haven’t had directly delivered out there. No more — we’ll be fighting the lines at FedEx/UPS to ship them. And again we’ve been lucky in that one or another of the grandparents usually drives out to see us in the spring, and we’ve used them to carry overflow and oversized gifts. Now we’ll either be sending it all via them, or else shipping it back. And, yes, the shipping costs will begin to easily match the costs of “shipping” it on the airplane (plus the annoyance and delays of shipping stuff during the holidays).

Hmmm … maybe this is all a conspiracy of the gift card industry.

Now, I do have some sympathy for the airlines. High fuel costs have hit their already shaky industry hard. And maybe this is just a reality check on basic services that we’ve been “lucky” to get for free until now.

On the other hand, there is a lot of irony that just as the TSA has been exerting inconvenience pressure to check more and more of our luggage, the airlines are now exerting inconvenience pressure to carry it on.

Question:  If the overhead bins fill up and people have to have luggage checked at the gate, will they have to pony up the $15 right then and there? If they don’t have the cash, can they not fly? Will the gates be set up to accept credit cards? Will gate checking for strollers count in this?

Here is what I expect to see in future travel:

1. Boarding planes is going to become even more nightmarish, as people push the limits of what constitutes carry-on, and wrangle over overhead and underseat storage (esp. since more planes are flying full).
2. Checking in is going to become even more annoying, since checking a bag isn’t just poking a number on a kiosk screen, but swiping your credit card to pay for it there, too.
3. People are just going to give up on flying. Which, possibly, will alleviate the above, except it’s not going to help the overall financial health of the airline industry.

Rrg.