Cruising Altitude is a weekly column about air travel. Have a suggestion for a future topic? Fill out the form or email me at the address at the bottom of this page.
A higher checked bag fee? In this economy? Yes.
All the major U.S. airlines — American, United, Delta, Southwest, and JetBlue — announced in the last few weeks that they are raising their bag fees. I’m sorry to say the $45 checked-bag fee is the new normal. The price won’t go back down.
The carriers all generally cited higher operational costs as the reason for raising the bag fees. With oil prices rising due to the Iran war, airlines' costs have indeed gone up for now, but it’s unlikely that bag fees will come down again once oil gets less expensive.
“There is no chance that these bag fees are going in the opposite direction,” Brett Snyder, author of the blog Cranky Flier and owner of the travel agency Cranky Concierge, told me.
