
An Airline Fee That Exists for No Apparent Reason - jedwhite
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-airline-fee-that-exists-for-no-apparent-reason-1530104985
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listenallyall
While we're at it, might as well complain about hotel "resort fees," which I
feel are far more predatory since they are NOT included in the reservation
rate you pay online, and are often difficult to find prior to showing up at
the hotel. Plus they usually cover things that used to be no-brainers like use
of the fitness center and daily newspaper.

I'm surprised the online reservation sites and the host cities haven't fought
back against this practice. Booking a $75 room with a $30 resort fee robs the
booking site of nearly a third of its commission, and the city of the same
proportion of the hotel taxes. (the sales tax charged on the resort fee is not
the same as the hotel occupancy taxes charged on the room rate.)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
My personal gripe is banks' "inactive account fee". Is my account being
inactive costing them any money? Well, no, it's not _costing_ them any more
money. It might mean that they don't have opportunity to charge _other_ fees,
but what it really seems to be is "if you're not paying attention to this
account, we'll start charging you this fee because you won't notice".

~~~
jtokoph
I think it’s the banks way of taking some of the money before it’s legally
taken by the state. In many if not all states, if a bank account is inactive
for 3-5 years, the state considers it “lost” and takes the money until it’s
claimed in the future. So the bank will try to drain as much as possible for
themselves before that happens.

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jpatokal
In "turnabout is fair play", there's a neat technique called "fuel dumping"
that makes use of this by finding fares that, for various complicated reasons,
_don 't_ have the surcharges added, occasionally allowing crazy cheap flights.
It's quite complicated though and (surprise!) airlines hate it.

[https://www.secretflying.com/posts/fuel-dumping-
basics/](https://www.secretflying.com/posts/fuel-dumping-basics/)

~~~
craftyguy
Not really secret if it has a public website that is shared publicly.

~~~
adrianmonk
Perhaps it's "secret" in the sense of tricks known to any expert in a subject.

Much like the secret to more-easily peeled hard-boiled eggs is to put the eggs
in cold water before you boil it. Or like baking soda is the secret to shrimp
with a firm texture.

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dewey
I always thought the secret is to put them in cold water after you boiled
them? That’s how I’ve been doing it since forever and it works well.

~~~
adrianmonk
A lot of info I can find contradicts other info, so it's hard to be sure. I
can't find good support for the method I gave, though. I was under the
impression that chilling them afterward was mainly about stopping the process
of cooking, though I can't say it doesn't also help with peeling.

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cpncrunch
In Canada the airlines have to advertise total price. They can show a
breakdown of taxes and fees, but the main advertised price must be the total
price the customer pays.

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advisedwang
As the article states, the issues isn't that customers don't see the fares
when searching for prices, but that loyalty programs and some corporate
discounts exclude fees. So this practice gouges them.

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nradov
Corporate travel managers aren't naive about this stuff. They know what
they're getting when they negotiate a discount for employee travel.

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jiveturkey
[https://outline.com/dWqwhr](https://outline.com/dWqwhr)

~~~
missblit
Is it just me or does outline.com not work at all half the time in any browser
besides Chrome because it checks for the nonstandard `window.chrome` property?

~~~
tscs37
Works in Firefox 60 for me.

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jwilliams
The surcharges often are used against miles-based travel. You book the ticket
one miles, but still get hit by various taxes and surcharges. Often it's a
large chunk of the total fare.

Qantas has a "fuel surcharge" for a long period during high oil prices. This
surcharge was literally to bill you for a base cost of their service. Arguably
pure marketing.

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yitchelle
Have Qantas removed the "surcharge" yet? I remember hearing about it in the
late 80s, and continue to hear about it through the 90s.

~~~
lathiat
Still high taxes for Qantas rewards redemptions. Majorly so.

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wyattpeak
Unusually for WSJ, I find the title of the article fairly misleading. It seems
to imply that there is an extra charge being levied, whereas it's actually
talking about a complicated price structure designed to disadvantage frequent
fliers and corporate customers.

Still shady, but not obviously implied by the title.

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aidenn0
I seem to recall that when the government repealed some telecom tax, Verizon
added a surcharge of an equal amount, and pocketed more money without changing
the total bill for anyone.

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so33
Slightly off-topic: My "favorite" fee I've encountered is Spirit Airlines'
"Unintended Consequences Fee": [https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/01/travel/spirit-
fee/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/01/travel/spirit-fee/index.html)

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imgabe
> And it doesn’t impact how many frequent-flier miles you collect for a flight
> on an airline that pays out miles by price instead of distance.

Not true exactly, at least on American. I fly them almost exclusively and I
just went to check this out. To move up to the next tier of status in their
frequent flier program, you need to spend a certain amount of "Elite
Qualifying Dollars" (or EQD) every year. The EQD are based only on the fare
price, exclusive of taxes and fees.

So, this would allow them to control how many people are moving up to the
different status levels, by adjusting the fees vs. fares for each ticket.

~~~
pmcginn
That's not true--this article is about airline fees, not government fees, and
AA counts airline fees when they calculate EQD's. From AA.com:

"EQDs are awarded based on ticket price (includes base fare plus carrier-
imposed fees, but excludes government-imposed taxes and fees)"

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imgabe
When I look at the receipt from my ticket I see:

    
    
        FARE-USD 	$ 440. 	93
        TAXES AND CARRIER-IMPOSED FEES 	$ 61.67
        TICKET TOTAL 	$ 502. 	60 
    

Then when I go to the account summary and see the EQD awarded from that trip,
it's 440, which is only the amount of the fare. Maybe it was only taxes on
that ticket and no carrier fees though.

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the_watcher
> Those carriers give out miles based on total fare.

Sort of. They give out miles based on this, but often not the miles needed to
accrue status (which often makes mileage accrual substantially more lucrative,
as well unlocking free/reduced upgrade access). On United, for example, you
accrue MileagePlus miles based on total price paid, but accrue "Premier
Qualifying Miles" and "Premier Qualifying Dollars" based on the "fare", which
is always far lower.

~~~
dannyw
No, PQD includes carrier surcharges. Here’s United:

> You earn PQD for the base fare and carrier-imposed surcharges on eligible
> flights.

Same for American, and probably other carriers too.

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coldcode
When I worked for a travel company I saw a lot of fares that had lots of taxes
and fees on them. Some flights brought fewer dollars to the airline than
everyone else. You pay for both airports, the
cities/states/provinces/countries they are in and places you go thru airspace
to and anyone else who can put in a claim. The most I ever saw was around 12
on a single segment. The final cost of an airline ticket supports a village.

~~~
jlarocco
But that's how everything works. When I buy a gallon of milk at the grocery
store, the store gets a cut, the delivery truck driver gets a cut, the gas
station he uses gets a tiny cut, the farmer gets a cut, the bottler gets some,
etc. Despite all that, the price I see is a single number.

The weird thing with airline tickets is that the airlines break the price out
into two pieces and call one the fare and the other a processing fee, as if
that distinction makes any difference to anybody but them.

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dboreham
It isn't just airlines. Other industries have discovered this dark pattern
(presumably there is a class in "Dr Evil MBA" where they teach it).

E.g look at your phone bill.

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chrisbennet
I have a fantasy of getting one of these companies as a client and padding my
bill using fees like theirs: “federally mandated taxes” (my income taxes),
“infrastructure fee” (my computer etc), “e&o insurance” (my errors and
omissions insurance), “PP charge” (pure profit fee), etc.

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timcederman
I recently priced up tickets from San Franisco to Sydney, and it was more than
double the cost of Sydney to San Francisco. In fact, I priced up dates that
included my original itinerary, and it was cheaper to buy two tickets
originating in Australia.

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kenneth
This isn't related to the carrier-imposed surcharges, however. Airfare is
priced according to a system of filed fares with specific rules, for specific
city pairs, that require booking into specific "inventory."

Internationally, round-trips and different fares than one-ways. And SFO-SYD is
a different fare altogether from SYD-SFO.

A fare might say:

    
    
        - Originates in SFO, destination SYD
        - Books into economy class
        - Requires S-code inventory
        - Requires a round-trip
        - Can be combined on a half-round-trip basis with any other fare USA-Australia fare (e.g. you could combine two fares SFO-SYD and NYC-MEL to get a SFO-SYD/NYC-MEL round trip)
        - Can use any flights that have S-code inventory
        - Except no stopovers
        - And only 1 transfers in Area 1 (USA)
        - Can be reissued for 400 USD
    

With that fare, you can then build an itinerary from segments (flights) that
match all requirements of the fare.

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timcederman
How is this different to the first example in the article?

> They aren’t tied to distance traveled—fees are often the same for flights
> from Europe to New York and Los Angeles. They vary wildly by direction of
> travel. Business-class tickets on British Airways between New York and
> London have a $1,006 carrier-imposed charge if the round-trip begins in New
> York, but only $381 if the round trip originates in London.

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namdnay
The article was discussing extra fees tacked on to FQTV tickets

