There are dozens of websites offering to locate the lowest fare on your airline tickets. I think we’d be hard pressed to find someone that has not at least consulted one of these sites prior to booking a business trip or vacation.
Most people see the fare price and then decide whether or not they can make concessions such as time of day, number of stops, airport distance, etc. Once those choices are made, the consumer makes the purchase believing the ‘travel cost’ has been taken care of.
That is far from the truth. From an MSNBC article:
Because of this mismanagement, they’ve decided to try lining their coffers by coming up with a slew of obnoxious extra charges.
They then go on to list some totally obnoxious fees and in some cases, they name the airlines that hit you with them. Here is their list, you can click through to read a couple paragraphs on each item.
- Making a reservation on the phone or in person
- Re-banking frequent flyer miles
- Cashing in frequent flyer miles without sufficient advance notice
- Bringing a pet onboard in the cabin
- Checking luggage
- Getting a refund when a fare goes down
- Flying standby on the same day of travel
- Paying for lap children
- Getting a seat assignment
To read more on these, read 10 most obnoxious hidden airline fees in the MSNBC Travel section.