For vacation, my wife and I went to Hawaii (the Big Island of Hawaii) and, of course, took a plane there. Due to when we travelled and booked the flight, our tickets were not cheap, in fact, they were the most expensive tickets I’ve ever purchased. While the cost kind of stung, it was the corners that the airlines are cutting that annoy me. We packed a pretty big bag as I travel with a lot of junk and we never thought about its weight until a few hours before we left when I checked American Airline’s website and found that the weight limit decreased from 70 pounds to 50 pounds per piece of checked luggage. For $25, you could have a 51-75 pound bag or for $50, a 67-100 pound bag. We moved some stuff to another bag and when we got to the airport, it weighed in at 49.5 pounds! On the way back, we got by at exactly 50 pounds. This change in weight limits can’t have anything to do with fuel costs and must be associated with greed, in my opinion. We are each allowed 2 checked bags at 50 pounds each and 1 carry-on at 30 pounds. So, we could have packed 260 pounds of stuff (now that’s a lot of stuff). Instead, we went with 1 checked bag at 50 pounds and 1 carry on at < 30 pounds. If we had stuffed our checked bag, we would have paid extra, but if we took another bag, we could have had an extra 50 pounds of stuff to bring. Does the extra $25 cover worker’s compensation insurance for those lifting the bags? I did see a suitcase with a built in scale on a website recently; must be to avoid the extra fees.
My complaints don’t stop there. On a 5 hour trip from Los Angeles to Kona, Hawaii, they offer to serve us a snack for $5 each. Didn’t I already pay enough for the ticket that they could throw in the snack? I already knew about this before we left, so we picked up sandwiches custom made to what we wanted; granted we paid about $4.50 each for them, but we had fresh sandwiches with whatever we wanted on them.
On the way back, I used frequent flyer miles to upgrade us to first class as it was an overnight flight and I wanted to be comfortable. There we were offered (at no charge) soup and some other things. However, who eats soup at 11 pm? Maybe I should have had it just to get my money’s worth.
I understand that airlines have to make money, but can’t they cut expenses in other ways instead of nickel and diming its customers? I really like flying Southwest because it is an airline that I expect nothing (peanuts and a drink) and am delivered exactly that. Their staff seems always to be friendly (the American staff was also friendly on this trip). In addition, the other passengers seem to have the same feeling on Southwest which makes for a pleasant flight when everyone is happy. Southwest has also managed to make money; granted they do fly different, more profitable routes, than other carriers and bought gas futures awhile ago, but maybe the bigger players can take a few hints.