How Would You Like to Pay $4.50 to Check Your Bags? Sound Too Good To Be True, Maybe Not with the Baggage Fee Fairness Act (2015)
by Heather Cassell
Are you packing lighter? Dreading figuring out the jigsaw puzzle of cramming everything you need for your weeklong vacation into your tiny carry-on just to avoid checking luggage? Fear no more! Well soon.
That ridiculous baggage fee that starts at $25 and can go up to $100 or more that we’ve all had to live with since – well so long ago that we barely remember the days when checking your bag was free – might get chopped into nearly a fifth of what it is now. How? you ask. Just say thanks to Representative John Mica, R-Fla.
John, who is the chairman of the House Transportation Oversight Subcommittee, introduced the Baggage Fee Fairness Act of 2015, which would cap baggage fees and funnel the money to improve US airports, to Congress today, July 22, his office announced in a news release earlier today.
Essentially, the bill would limit baggage fees to $4.50 per bag by classifying it as the Passenger Facility Charges, which is one of those detailed fee charges when you book your flight.
That fee has been around for 15 years has also been under contention between airports and airlines. For years airlines and airports have argued about either to raising the fee to $8.50 or not, reports The Hill. Airports want Congress to nearly double the fee and the airlines don’t. Consumer advocates want Congress to take action, but that hasn’t happened.
The airlines argue that travelers get hit with too many fees enacted by government all the while raking in the cash – oh only about $3.5 billion in baggage fees alone within the past 12 months – with ancillary fees, according to the United States Travel Association.
Consumer and travel advocacy groups have been pushing for airline baggage fees to be included in under the Passenger Facility Charges, which Congress established in 1990 to help fund airport improvements so US airports could function and operate.
If baggage fees were deemed as a basic service under the Passenger Facility Charges it would contribute to the Airport and Airway Trust Fund not the pockets of the airlines. It’s unclear where other ancillary fees, which are non-taxable, will fall as the new legislation only focuses on the baggage fees.
Currently, as it stands the fees only line the pockets of the airlines that charge them, such as American, Delta, United and now JetBlue.
The budget airline announced it was going to start charging $25 for checked bags June 30.
Air Canada, Southwest, Virgin America, and WestJet don’t charge for checking the first bag.
Either way, the bottom line is taxpayers are paying. They are paying either $4.50 per checked bag or out of the taxpayer revenues gathered by the IRS. Those revenues supplement the difference to operate and maintain the air control and air service systems, reports The Hill. So, if we are paying, then we want to pay the rate that is best for us not the airlines.
“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” says John in the release. “This is fair and equitable since airports have been held to that fee level for handling passengers at the same $4.50 limitation by law for the past 15 years. During that decade and a half, most major carriers have imposed dramatically increased baggage and service fees.”
The airlines disagree calling the cap on baggage fees a “misguided attempt to increase the passenger facility charge,” says a representative of Airlines for America, an airline lobby group, tells The Hill.
“Congressman Mica knows well that the government stopped dictating air travel pricing back in 1978, when it cost nearly 61 percent more (adjusted for inflation) for people to fly than it did last year,” the spokesperson writes in a statement pointing to The Airline Deregulation Act signed by then President Jimmy Carter to The Hill.
The spokesperson says that the fees are the wish of the airports that would like to “needlessly increase by 90 percent,” and that the airports, which are making improvements at 30 of the nation’s largest airports since 2008, have “more than enough resources to invest in infrastructure today.”
Consumer groups praised John today for introducing the legislation.
This is not the first time a member of congress has attempted to limit or put a cap on airline baggage fees. In 2011, Senator Mary Landrieu, D-La., introduced the Airline Passenger Basic Airline Standards to Improve Customer Satisfaction (BASICS) Act (S. 1913) and the Fair Airline Industry Revenue (FAIR) Act (S. 1918) to reinstate the free one checked bag per traveler and a fine for airlines that would charge for the first checked bag, respectively.
Both bills have been stalled in the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation since November 2011.
However, now might be the right time. Congress is considering the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization, examining aviation system safety and pilot training is one of the essential pieces in the policy, which legally expires at the end of September.
To book your next trip, contact Heather Cassell at Girls That Roam Travel at Travel Advisors of Los Gatos at 408-354-6531at or .
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