American Airlines will charge $15 for checking your FIRST bag

And the fees keep coming.  Now American Airlines will charge you $15 to check your FIRST bag.  Elites are exempt.  So are international itineraries.  But otherwise expect to pay up for checking a bag.  I expect them to increase enforcement of carry-on size restrictions.  I also expect United and others to join the race to the bottom as soon as they can.

From American Airlines' press release:

Today, American introduced a $15 fee for the first checked bag, given the increasing costs of transporting checked baggage. This fee, which is effective for tickets purchased on or after June 15, does not apply to: American's AAdvantage program members who have achieved AAdvantage Gold, AAdvantage Platinum and AAdvantage Executive Platinum level; those who have purchased full-fare tickets in the Economy, Business and First Class cabins; and those with international itineraries (except to and from Canada and U.S. territories, such as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands).

Comments

[Sheila]

Interesting find. (I shared this on Twitter.) I wonder how long it will before the other airlines follow.

[The Flying Critic]

Hopefully the other airlines don't. But many of the legacies are in a very tough position because their operations are not sustainable with the price of oil what it is.

And because of competition and overcapacity they feel like they can't raise fares to what they need to be to stay in business. So instead they are trying to dump fees on everyone to cover their cost of oil.

At some point they will run out of things to charge fees for and will need to just raise fares to become sustainable - or they will go out of business.

As for who will join American Airlines with this fee - my best guess is United joins pretty quick. US Airways probably will too.

I'm worried that this will cause more people to carry-on bags which will congest and delay the boarding process and further anger the front line employees who have to deal with imposing all these new fees on the customers.

[Samantha]

I got excited when I first saw the $15 because I thought AA was dropping the price of 2nd bag checking :( Depressing...

[The Flying Critic]

Delta just announced that they won't be adopting a fee for checking the first bag. So perhaps there is hope that other airlines won't follow. But I wouldn't get your hopes up.

[Nomadic Matt]

I stumbled this for ya!

I think its inevitable they will start raising fares. Already fares have gone up a bit and I expect them to go higher.

[Golf Club Rental]

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