Looks like a regular, boring law full of regular, boring regulations. I don't see any issues.
>The story of this law has been dominated largely by what isn't in it: no restrictions on what airlines can charge for baggage or change fees.
I'm glad. I don't like paying baggage fees (in fact, I've started to travel much more with only a carry-on partly to avoid the fees) but this is one of those things that the market should decide. It's an extra revenue stream for airlines (or an extra perk when waived for those with status). In general gives airlines more options and more flexibility in adjusting ticket prices.
Flying did get much worse as "1 free checked bag" became more rare. Now everyone wants to fly with a mountain climbing backpack, and planes regularly run out of overhead space.
No, I'm not checking my $10k in camera equipment because people aren't checking their dirty tshirts.
It became more rare because the cost to fly people (plus one free checked bag) began to exceed what people were willing to pay, so airlines pulled a lever. If this were regulated, the cost of plane tickets would go up for everyone plus overhead for compliance. Maybe that's a better deal for you, but only because the government is effectively forcing other flyers to pay your way.
I suspect you have the cause and effect backwards. It's not that people weren't willing to pay the cost of the included checked bag -- back when every airline did include 1 (or even 2!) free checked bags, it's not as people wanting to fly were going to travel sites and saying, "If only the cheapest flight here was $25 less than it was, I'd buy a ticket, but guess I'm stuck with Greyhound now." Instead, by not including the checked bag in the cost of the initial fare, an airline got to have a lower number in the list of ticket prices when customers checked on aggregation sites like Orbitz and Expedia, and most other airlines quickly followed.
This. It's the same reason American hotels are expanding and increasing "resort fees", and auto dealerships try to charge as much as possible for "doc fees". Businesses have essentially added their OWN taxes on transactions in order to lower the prices they advertise below what they actually charge. It's got a name: bait and switch.
US really just needs to adapt transparent pricing laws, like most of the civilized world. Yes, I know sales tax in various jurisdictions makes it impossible, but at least make them advertise the "all in" cost including any fees.
Quite a few airlines in Europe tack "fuel surcharge" fees onto tickets, especially those booked using frequent-flyer miles. Depending on the airline and destination, the "fuel surcharge" -- which must be paid in cash -- for redeeming miles can approach the cost of just buying a ticket.
For example, if you book a flight from the US to London on American Airlines, redeeming miles, you'll be on the hook for around $10 in taxes. If you book the same flight, using American Airlines miles, but happen to be unfortunate enough to get it on their partner British Airways, you'll get dinged for around five hundred dollars in "fuel surcharge".
Last time I checked, Brazil was the only country where this is illegal.
But how would that work for something like an airline ticket on a comparison site? The airline has pricing transparency- they tell you when you buy a ticket that a checked bag isn't included. It is the comparison site where that is missing.
Let's say you decided to make every airline display how much it costs to fly with one checked bag... well, why did you pick one? What if one airline let's you check two bags free? Or if one gives you free food but the other charges? Has more leg room? Etc...
Pricing transparency laws only help things like "you have to include all taxes and fees for the exact item you are selling"
It doesn't help with requiring a company to include certain extras (like a checked bag or two) with the price. You are allowed to choose how you bundle things together, no matter the pricing transparency laws.
It is a website. With forms. And logic to query a database. And do math.
Aggregators are capable of asking what city, date and time, how many bodies, which service class, which seat, etc. and returning your menu of options with prices based on those details.
Yet asking "how many bags" and multiplying that by the airline's rate is impossible?
Of course it requires changes. I suspect those happen now and then.
My point is that airlines would be able to find something else to withhold by default and charge for if you tried to mandate bag fees be displayed up front. A fee for being allowed to recline. A fee for getting to sit behind someone who isn't allowed to recline. The list goes on and on.
However, then you can't argue anymore that "the market" will handle it. Because even the theory behind that requires that market participants are informed - which they evidently aren't.
A suitcase when you travel is not an extra.
The payment of the waiter when I dine out is not an extra.
And transparency is not about informing the customer about charges in the fine-print of a website or a menu card. Transparency is being up-front with the total cost so you make it easy for the customer to make an informed choice.
I usually travel with a single carry-on bag when I travel. It's a tiny hard sided suitcase that fits in the carry-on space and includes enough clothes for a week. I don't technically need a free checked bag nor would I typically use one as I want to avoid the insane wait at the luggage claim. So this I disagree with. I don't mind charging for checked bags, but then I don't mind paying more for air travel for certain things, so I don't think that this particular example fits.
I wholeheartedly agree that tipping should go away. It's literally a remnant of the post slavery age in America and has a nasty habit of lowering workers wages. Another problem is taking dine and dash bills out of the waiters wages. The waiter shouldn't be paying for deadbeats.
So I agree with your general point, just not on the airline baggage example.
Require companies that sell online to offer an open API so it's easy to aggregate? Sounds nuts, but not that different from open banking (PSD2) in the EU.
Ok... what information is required in the API? You can't possibly describe every possible differentiating characteristic of a product in an API... even for a specific case like airlines, there are countless differences. Plane type, baggage limits, weight limits on bags, leg room, in flight entertainment, Internet, food, drinks, etc. you want the law spelling out what needs to be included? What about other industries? New ones that are being created? What happens when new features are added that aren't in the api spec? Internet wasn't a thing on airplanes 10 years ago, so it wouldn't have made it in the spec, but now internet access is a huge differentiator for flights.
This is actually an easy problem to solve: define a list of extras in the standard including fees. The structure for each extra can be pretty rigid. Something like e.g.
short-name: Tray fee
long-name: You get a foldable tray for seat to use during the flight.
price: 39,99
includes-tax: false
This is basic data modeling, really. Tne real thing would probably have closer to 50 well defined fields instead of 4 because of real-world self-inflicted complexity in the system, but the concept is the same.
"Pricing transparency laws only help things like "you have to include all taxes and fees for the exact item you are selling"
That is part of the point. You can also have standard prices to quote: "All fees they charge every customer plus one checked bag should be included in price", for example. Airlines that offer bonuses for free will advertise it clearly. After all, we know when a shampoo bottle includes 20% extra shampoo temporarily - I'm not sure this will be an issue. People know that 2 hotels might be the same price but only one of them offers use of a pool - I'm pretty sure they will look at airlines as well.
In the US there are taxes at the time of sale. These taxes change depending on where you are making the purchase, where you live, who you are, and what you are buying.
Those things are fixed at purchase though aren't they? I don't pay a lower sales tax in a different state because I live somewhere else, and I don't pay less sales tax on a book if I buy it in the same transaction as something with a different levy. Europe has VAT on most items, but the rates are different based on what you're buying, where you're buying it and where you reside, but we manage it
The POS system knows how to calculate the cost of each item, why can't they just out that on the sticker instead,.
Sure, and there are some places that include tax in the listed price. Usually businesses that do this figure it out so the price after tax comes to a whole number. This goes against the common .99 marketing psychology, and is a red flag that they might be skimming.
However if the sale is online and the company has a presence in multiple states they have to charge based on the user, which they cant do until they know who the user is.
Edit: Just to be clear I wish they would put the final price.
Here is a picture I found of Pat's King of Steaks in Philadelphia, they have price tax and total for each item.
Seems like this would be a pretty simple fix wouldn't it? Choose your state when you jump onto a shopping site to see the price with taxes and shipping included. Instead they wait to bait and switch at the register.
For some reason I can't reply to a child of this comment. It would be easy enough to require all advertising to publish the lowest and highest all in price within the geographic area of the advertisement. For many ads, it would also be possible to require at least per state granularity. That would not be an onerous burden.
I chuckled at your scenario, but more realistically airlines realized that some critical mass of the market would rather pack a little lighter and save on their airfare instead of paying for a checked bag. If the scenario went as you described, then the airlines were trading their credibility for a short term boost in profits and the market will correct to their mid/long-term disadvantage. This is a poor consolation to the unsavvy consumers who "fell for it", but the solution is to produce savvier consumers, not to penalize the current crop of savvy consumers by inflating their ticket prices.
"This is a way for airlines to get the lowest price in front of consumers" and "this is a way to address a market segment willing to go carry-on only in order to save money" are not mutually exclusive, are they? Consider the recent addition of "Basic Economy" fares for some airlines now, which incur extra charges for overhead bin space. I would assert that this is a way to get an even lower price in front of consumers. You would presumably assert that it is a way for the airlines to let people who can travel with little to no luggage save even more. Again: both of those things can be true.
Lol they are both true; that’s my point. The market is securing an agreeable outcome for both parties. It’s literally a win-win scenario. The airlines are finding ways to carve out more value for their customers in exchange for their business. This is eminently desirable!
I think your real issue is against the increased cost of air travel and the inconvenience it poses for travelers who are unwilling or unable to compromise by trading off luggage for price. It sucks, but it’s not “greedy corporations”; it’s just economic reality.
I think you're missing one piece of this picture. If there is unused space/weight capacity, the airline fills that space with cargo from traditional/package carriers. So there are third parties, unseen to you as an airline passenger, competing with you on price to put stuff in that cargo hold.
I have the opposite experience. I never want to check my bags because waiting around at the carousel for a checked bag isn't my idea of a good time. I want to be able to just walk off the plane and get to ground transportation with minimal delays.
Yet airlines keep offering me free baggage check at the gate on full flights. I actively try to avoid checking my bags, but I'm usually in boarding Group 3 or 4, so I'm forced to have my bag gate-checked. I hate it. Most people do. Some even try to untag their force-checked bags on the jetway when they see overhead luggage space, and then get told off because that is prohibited. I've resorted to buying an AmazonBasics underseat bag[1] so I never have to check my bag.
For domestic flights, in my experience few people want to check their bags. (exceptions exist of course, like in your case)
For international flights, checking bags is included in the cost of the ticket.
On the routes I usually fly, waiting at the carousel usually doesn’t add more than maybe 15 minutes. And I usually go to the bathroom and grab some food anyway.
It’s certainly preferred over the hell of trying to get my bags overhead, and also allows you to wait and be the last person on the plane, minimizing time crammed in a tiny seat.
The amount of cumulative time wasted because of stowing bags is immense.
Waiting at the carousel has never been 15 minutes for me. You must travel to tiny airports. I literally never seen an airport that's taken less than half an hour to deliver my bags.
> I have the opposite experience. I never want to check my bags because waiting around at the carousel for a checked bag isn't my idea of a good time. I want to be able to just walk off the plane and get to ground transportation with minimal delays.
I see how that's convenient, and I would prefer that too. But not to be passive aggressive about it: I don't want to be part of the problem, so I check luggage when I can.
From other people's comments in this thread I see that most people don't give a shit about anyone else, so I guess I'm an exception.
Because 'rah rah' we all love the military. It doesn't cost them anything and they get the PR of everyone boarding a plane hearing about how much they love the military.
Because it's the least that can be done for people willing to take substandard pay for risking their lives in literal battle zones. You can only really use it when you're traveling on orders, meaning being transferred to somewhere away from your family or when you're in full uniform. Most service members I know only use it when being deployed.
No, I don’t work for Amazon and that wasn’t an ad but a concrete example of a particular form factor of an underseat bag that came to mind because I happen to own one, and thought it was something other frequent travellers might consider adopting. (I’ve only recently converged on the form factor after having tried many others)
They do fit in most rows except aisle, but even then, because of their small size, they can usually be made to fit in a nearly full overhead compartment (source: recent personal experience). I’ve just returned from traveling around Europe and I can’t count the number of times I’ve managed to avoid inconvenient situations because I didn’t bring a full size rollabord. I’ve even been able to put mine on my lap on a full bus in Spain.
Yeah, most bothering to me are flights were there are some weird seat poles on the seat in front that prevent regular backpacks from fitting in the seat in front - I have had this a few times, it's very annoying having to put the backpack with computer and stuff in the overhead bin.
one hack you can use in the US (admittedly with a lot of overhead) if you're worried about tampering with checked bags, loss etc. is to check in a firearm inside of a particular bag with other expensive goods.
the requirements (law) specifically states that only YOU may carry the opening mechanism for the case, and it must be a hard case. sure they might ask you to open it, but it will be tracked with great vigor, must be in a hard case, and only you can open it.
Starter pistols can be used too instead of a ‘real’ gun. At the destination they keep the bag secure for you to pickup, no getting it off the baggage carousels.
Of course some destinations won’t let you have a gun...
Ammo works too. Worked at a shop where they would have us transport a 1U server in a case that also held a single .22 round. You would fly to the location, pick up the server, and hand the bullet to the person working the desk to discard. Got the occasional dirty look, but prototypes were never lost. Empty case could be checked on the way home.
TSA (or equivalent travel agencies) can force that locked hard case to be just large enough to cover the arm and its ammunition and not all the baggage.
In my recent flights, the time spent on getting carry-on baggage stowed properly before departure is what makes it a mystery to me that airlines aren't offering free checked baggage and charging for carry-ons.
It actually common on European short haul for the company to “offer” to stove carryon in the hold at the gate at least from what I have personally seen.
Yep. And if you get lucky, the people at RyanAir won't measure/weigh it if you volunteer when they ask. Means you can often get by even if you're over their limits, though it varies by airport I think.
You could also pay for a premium ticket and board early to protect your very expensive equipment. Sure the extra $25-$100 wouldn't be a huge burden compared to the $10k of your equipment.
Can I? I show up extra early when I can (e.g. not a connecting flight) to make sure my carry-on is not bumped, but the only way to not have to worry about this is flying business, and that's more like a few thousand dollars extra, for cross-atlantic.
yeah... I frequently fly with guitars. On Southwest, you can pay for early-bird check-in and get a nearly guaranteed A boarding spot. On American and United, you can pay $15 for early boarding. For international and generally on anything larger than a 767, overhead compartment space is rarely an issue.
Ironically this is cutting into airline revenue as gate time increases. Southwest makes it a point to reduce time at the gate as much as possible by herding people onto the plane in a stampede, and part of that is making sure what put their bags below the plane by offering two checked bags free. Market forces will eventually balance this out for the the other airlines since SW intentionally tries to avoid routes served by other major airlines
I travel a lot. The problem isn't your first bag, it's that a lot of people also store their second bag in overhead which should go at their feet but they want to stretch their legs. This adds way more problems than the first bag.
I'm always carry-on even with my free & priority checked bags thanks to status. For business travel, I like to move quickly through the airport. For personal travel, especially international, nothing is worse than pulling around a lot of luggage like a first-time tourist. Those pebble roads, tight commuter trains, and long step-walks in Europe can be a drag. Last month we travelled 21 days across 5 countries with just a carry-on.
In both cases, the airline losing your bag is a real pain to deal with on any trip – happened a lot to me on multi-connects but much less of a problem on directs.
>Flying did get much worse as "1 free checked bag" became more rare.
I disagree. It got cheaper and some of the price savings came as a result of removing the old perks(which are still there, but you have to pay for them separately). By the way, checked baggage was never free. There was always a hidden cost that was not reflected in the ticket price.
>Now everyone wants to fly with a mountain climbing backpack
Airlines have gotten better at designing and running routes in such a way that the airplane is as full as it can be. Also after regulations were relaxed airlines now use the hub-spoke model instead of being forced to do direct flights between two small-markets (and thereby making ticket more expensive), which results in, again, full airplanes. Years ago there was a good chance that at any given time I would fly in a half-empty plane, now it rarely happens. I think this is what you're noticing.
> I'm not checking my $10k in camera equipment because people aren't checking their dirty tshirts.
Occasionally I travel with expensive equipment (e.g. I have a high-end mini-PC) and in those cases I opt to pay $20 for zone 1/2 priority boarding so that I put my stuff in the overhead compartment ahead of zone 3/4/5 masses and therefore limit the risk of having it gate-checked. I like that I am able to make that choice, as opposed to not having the choice.
I don't really care what's in my luggage or how much it cost to check a bag but they the delays to get back my checked bags are killing me (when they don't loose them)... much quicker to keep everything with me.
Actually, I think the problem may be that they didn't go all the way. If overhead space also cost, then it wouldn't be the scarce free resource everyone fights over. A much cheaper cost for checking small items (backpack, over the shoulder bag) and very close to parity with checked items (maybe above, maybe below) for suitcase sized items would likely solve the problem. A slight reduction in fees for checked bags would also be warranted.
Once everything is accurately priced and tracked, there's no problem with space anymore. They know how many cubic feet of space they have, and they know what they've charged for.
Do you really think so? I imagine a $100 ticket would go to something like $97, and there might be a $5 fee for a small overhead space (regular size purse), $10, for a medium space (backpack or large purse), and $15-$20 for small luggage, and then going up steeply from there (since you should be checking things that size). Checked baggage prices might drop by $5 or so too, since they aren't subsidizing free overhead space.
Free additionals that have direct cost to the the provider but may or may not be useful or utilized by the customer are things for luxury products. Overall, everyone is better off (even if they don't feel better off) by paying for what they actually use. The people that lose out are the people that used to use more than their fair share. If you still like the idea of paying one (higher) price and having things like luggage covered, that's what other classes (like premium economy, business and first class) are for. It's called economy class for a reason...
I'm talking about "transaction costs" in the economics sense - the cost to the company of tracking who's paid for what, to the customer of comparing complex pricing schemes, etc.
No one likes getting nickled and dimed. While they are at it, weigh everyone before boarding, to properly charge them for how much extra fuel they consume beyond the base charge. Then heavier people won't be using more than their "fair" share. Except now you've pissed off even the super skinny people who have to deal with the "transaction cost" / extra time involved, who were perfectly willing in the past to perhaps pay slightly more than if they were heavier because it simplifies the experience. Heavier people also think that way, not "oh boy I'm getting a good deal flying at the same price as this lightweight".
Indeed, that works great for all the people who pack and measure exactly their bags a month in advance when they buy their ticket so they know the exact dimensions.
In reality, no one knows the dimensions of their bags until the night before, and that's too late for the airline to tell them "no" or add charges reasonably.
The problem is that people insist on bringing crap like this[0] with them onboard the flight when it clearly doesn't fit. I get a slightly sadistic pleasure whenever I see a confiscated herd of these bags at the end of the jet bridge. Like, those people really thought they could bring a bag the size of their mini-fridge onto a flight? Get real, people.
I'm super confused. In EU all airlines use sizers before the gate, if whatever you want to bring on board doesn't fit into the sizer(and the bag you posted definitely wouldn't) it has to be checked in at a heavy fee. Do US airlines just don't care what you bring in board with you?
The size matters in the US, too, but that doesn't stop a dozen people from trying to get away with carrying on an oversized bag. You'll usually find anywhere from a few to a dozen bags confiscated on the boarding bridge.
I'm in the same boat as you. I do these long trips, and also have multiple laptops and lots of camera equipment. I use a backpack for my carry-on, because that is less likely to be checked/gate checked, but even that is a problem because now airlines reduced the weight limit of carry on items and started aggressively enforcing this. There is simply no way my photo equipment will weigh less than 8kg. Impossible.
What the hell am I supposed to do?
I would gladly pay money if they allowed me the usual old 23kg standard.
I’m with you on people bringing bags onboard that are far too large for overhead storage, but the solution to that problem is airlines actually enforcing size restrictions.
That's not actually a solution. The airlines have created a situation where there's an incentive for more people to bring carry-on bags than will fit in overhead storage even if all bags are within size restrictions. Stricter enforcement of the existing bag size restrictions will only slightly improve the situation. That's part of why we're starting to see a new lower class of service where you aren't allowed to bring a bag for the overhead bin.
It’s absolutely a solution. Even if the airlines create an incentive to bring carry-on, if there’s a reasonable limit to the number of items and size, everyone’s luggage will fit! This is how the rest of the world operates airlines.
This is not how airlines are operated. In many other countries you get one or two checked bags included in the ticket.
A strange thing occurs as a consequence: you just board the plane, and then the plane goes.
Do you do the weird not-a-queue-but-queueish-blob-of-people thing? No, because there is not a zero-sum game for overhead space.
Do you do the pay-extra-to-spend-longer-in-the-hell-tube thing? No, because there is not a zero-sum game for overhead space.
Do you spend 45 minutes to an hour fucking around with idiots who are trying to spit in the face of both geometry and physics and falling arse-first onto the nose of good manners? Not at all, flights are typically on the runway 15-20 minutes after the first boarding call. There is not a zero-sum game for overhead space.
When I first flew in the USA I thought "something is wrong with my flight". It took me several flights to realise: this is normal here. And it's maddening.
I'm also from the rest of the world but what you are saying doesn't match my reality.
In every flight I find plenty of people (myself included) that don't want to check in baggage, due to mishandling, possibility of loss, delays at the destination, and/or problems with connections. So even in airlines where you get a checked bag with the ticket, I regularly see all those things you say don't happen. Maybe it depends on which part of the rest of the world. I'm from Spain, for the record. At the Madrid airport you will see plenty of people queuing at boarding gates half an hour before they open. Most Spanish airlines even have a paid "priority boarding" option to board first, so people very much want to get into the hell tube sooner...
It's true that all of this is amplified for airlines that charge for checked luggage, though, so I'd rather they don't charge even if I don't want to check in myself. Competition for overhead space gets absolutely crazy when they don't charge.
I too am originally from the rest of the world, but currently living in the US, and agree that flying in the US is absurdly and frustratingly poorly managed.
My point about carry-on is that in other countries, you are strictly limited in what you can carry-on, and thus you either have to take less stuff or get checked luggage (free or otherwise). And guess what? Everything fits and people can just walk to their seat and sit down, as you described
I fail to see why the US has a system where everyone is allowed to take two giant items, and then without fail half the plane has to gate-check and it causes significant slowdowns and frustration. It’s like smacking your head into a wall repeatedly, wondering why your head hurts, and continuing.
I can see why people don’t want to check; short flights for business as so much faster when you don’t have to wait for the baggage carrousel or lost luggage. But when you’ve got a 50% chance of being checked anyway, everything breaks down.
It the 'tragedy of the commons'. As soon as one US airline charged separately for checked bags, their tickets looked cheaper and they got more traffic. So the others had to follow. Now its $15-$50 for a checked bag, depending on what scam the airline is doing this week and how cheap they want their ticket to appear. Its sort of like shipping was on Amazon - 1 cent for an appliance! Oh, and shipping is $50.
It's a solution if and only if the space allotted is enough for everyone on the plane to bring a decent sized suitcase. If not, then it's not a solution.
This is precisely my point. The US allows people to Carry on two giant bags, and everyone pushes the boundaries absurdly.
In other countries, the carry-on limit is strictly enforced. They have metal frames to test the size of your luggage, and if it doesn’t slip in, you ain’t taking it on the plane. And a “personal item” isn’t allowed to be a second bag the size of a carry-on suitcase.
If you have too much stuff, tough. Either take less crap or get checked luggage.
I've recent experience of flying with checked luggage which contained multiple AA NiMH rechargable batteries, spare camera batteries, and on one occasion even a fully-charged 16000 mAh power bank.
Are we saying that when the hold baggage is screened then just because of a stray battery or power pack they're going to ... do what, exactly?
Not carry that bag on your flight and leave the airline scrambling to reunite passenger with luggage?
Page the passenger (who is almost certainly airside by that point) and try to get them to come (where?) to repack/deal with the contents? I've never heard of a facility where an airside passenger can temporarily get access to hold baggage once it's been screened. Wouldn't the passenger and the hold bag each have to go back through the relevant screening channel after this interaction?
I've checked batteries dozens of times and never give it a second thought. As it turns out, I had two sets of brand-new NiMH AAs in my checked luggage this morning.
I can tell you exactly what they do as this happened to me ~9 months ago when I had inadvertently left an e-cigarette in a checked suitcase. I was indeed paged (I was airside) to report to a service desk, where the (quite friendly) staff led me through secure areas into the bowels of the airport, where my suitcase was awaiting me on what could be described as an "off-ramp" to the baggage roller system. I was then requested to open my suitcase and retrieve the offending item, did so, and all was well.
> I've checked batteries dozens of times and never give it a second thought
I suspect that if you start travelling through more modern airports with the kind of enhanced screening that got me you'll definitely be giving it a second thought... I also have checked them dozens of times but as screening gets updated it's looking like a thing of the past.
[No snark intended but] can you give us a definition of "modern" so I can compare against where I usually check my batteries from?
OT, but I did once attempt to get a hot chocolate brownie with ice-cream topping through gate security at FRA; the x-ray operator was fine with it but his colleague called the supervisor over. I was eating it (quickly) while she and I were debating whether ice-cream was "a liquid", she really didn't like that. I handed the last 1/10th back :)
Ah, I should have probably said "airports with modern equipment" as I presume this stuff is susceptible to periodic updates regardless of the age of the airport. I suppose it does need a fairly recent baggage management system. For reference, it happened to me at Adelaide airport in Australia, which is about 10 years old. I guess then by modern I mean any first-world airport built within the last decade or so?
As noted I've flown with li-on and everything else in checked baggage a million times too and it was the first time it happened to me, so I assume the mandate is fairly recent.
That story is ridiculous, but makes me wonder what would happen if you tried to bring through a frozen bottle of water?
>Are we saying that when the hold baggage is screened then just because of a stray battery or power pack they're going to ... do what, exactly?
Not only for stray batteries, it's screened for all kinds of things, including drugs, bombs and other non-allowed items or dangerous stuff.
To my knowledge, if they do find something, you'll have some security guards come up to you and escort you to a separate section of the airport where you will be unpacking your luggage and remove the offending item, then repackage and you can go on (or not if the offense is too great to ignore).
>> if they do find something, you'll have some security guards come up to you and escort you to a separate section of the airport
I'm saying I have dozens of personal counter-examples to this claim, including another one from this morning, specifically relating to travelling with checked luggage containing batteries.
Hypothesis #1: maybe the "no batteries" policy is nowhere near as strictly enforced as people think it is?
Hypothesis #2: maybe other aspects of aviation security are nowhere near as strictly enforced as people think they are?
Or maybe you didn't get spotted so far and the airline you travel with is lax in this regard. I've definitely been pulled out for batteries in the past.
Usually a mix of both, depends heavily on where you are, in my country security is mandated by government but the exact procedures are left to the individual airports and evaluated by government agencies.
IIRC the US has the TSA but Airports can outsource to other third parties if the TSA permits it.
I don't see how that question is really relevant considering your bag will be atleast xrayed by one of the two at some point.
"If they wanted to" shouldn't really be part of any sane security policy.
If 'X' is genuinely dangerous, then always deal with X as if it were actually dangerous[1]; if X is however not dangerous, stop pretending.
[1] for instance the policy of confiscating >100ml bottles of liquid at airport security "because reasons" then have agents simply stuff these dangerous liquids into one large bin and leave them there at the screening point for hours.
That's not really what I meant. What I meant was, you seem to act as if enforcement of this policy would require a lot of logistical work on the part of the airline to ensure that the passenger wasn't separated from their bags, or that they were compensated for whatever they had to ditch due to security. However, that is not actually the policy or law they have to follow, and they are free to do arbitrary things. This makes enforcement much easier.
Whether or not that is "sane" or "right" or "wrong" isn't material to my counter-point.
I'm not convinced that airlines want to get into the business of arbitrary confiscation of non-compliant items from hold baggage especially if it's to be carried out when the passenger isn't present.
That's not true, as long as the battery is installed inside the device. You only can't check in spare batteries - they have to go in your hand luggage.
> Flying did get much worse as "1 free checked bag" became more rare.
Where is this rare? I have never bought an airline ticket, even in bare-bones economy, flying for business or leisure, with and without status, and not got an included checked bag. This is flying British Airways, United, Lufthansa, Delta, American, Japan, etc etc
Southwest is the only major US airline who does not normally charge for a checked bag in economy on domestic flights. Other airlines: Alaska ($25), Allegiant (up to $35), American ($35), Delta ($30), Frontier ($25), Hawaiian ($25), JetBlue ($30), Spirit ($30), United ($30).
Spirit, at least, does the right thing and charges $5 more to carry a typical bag onboard.
International flights are the only fights with sane pricing in the US now. What's even better is that you can avoid the slight nickel and diming they've begun to do by exclusively using international carriers.
I remember being blown away by the service I got on Singapore and Malaysia Airlines. Great food, decent amount of leg room, flight attendants that don't have complete and utter contempt for everyone that isn't in Business class or above, and free alcohol. That is until I realized they weren't that special, the North American companies were just significantly worse at pretty much all aspects of the flying experience. Often times the North American companies with their fees aren't even saving you much money, or none at all if you plan well, so its an easy choice when your flight is at least 12 hours. The dream would be to have them compete and operate domestic flights as well. It would be great to go from Chicago to Dulles on ANA instead of United.
If you book a short-haul ticket with Lufthansa or British Airways, you'll almost certainly be offered a range of fares including a "hand-baggage only" fare. This comes with zero included checked bags.
Even if you have elite status with BA, you won't get an free checked bag if you book such a fare[1]. LH are temporarily "as a goodwill rule" allowing their elites and star alliance gold elites to get one free checked bag on 'Light' fares[2].
I've flown literally hundreds of times in my life and with a single exception of a holiday flight with TUI, I have never ever been on a flight where a checked bag was included. Literally never.
My worry with everything that the market should decide is that the market is terrible about deciding in markets where the barrier to entry is so high. When every market participant starts charging a particular fee—one that is routinely hidden during the purchasing of a product or service, like baggage charges are—then there’s no realistic choice.
It’s just like binding arbitration clauses. In many industries, like mobile phone service, you can’t “choose” a market participant that doesn’t have such a clause because all of them do. When all, or virtually all (because every airline doesn’t serve every trip pair, even from a given airport), airlines charge bag fees, there’s no choice to bring a bag without some form of up-front investment or having to endure the madness that is the overhead bin zoo.
On the other hand, I don’t know that banning such fees is the way to go either. I suppose I’m mostly just griping that so many things are going to pay-per-everything and the large, advertised number has decreasingly little relevance to the final, actual cost.
> It’s just like binding arbitration clauses. In many industries, like mobile phone service, you can’t “choose” a market participant that doesn’t have such a clause because all of them do.
I couldn't agree more. What you are describing is a cartel, or, at a later stage, a monopoly-ish entity.
Markets "where the barrier to entry is so high" sometimes snap into existence as a function of what they do, but also sometimes appear simply because it's easier to collude than compete.
> It’s just like binding arbitration clauses. In many industries, like mobile phone service, you can’t “choose” a market participant that doesn’t have such a clause because all of them do.
Isn't that because the industry is regulated and the government is the actual barrier to entry? Not saying it's wrong, but saying that the market isn't working when you listed something caused by regulation is unfair argument IMO.
"The market deciding" doesn't necessarily mean new entrants.
I'd mostly worry that adding too many restrictions prevents existing airlines from coming up with innovative programs & business models that benefit everyone by realigning incentives — getting to the gate earlier, checking even small bags rather than dragging a huge roller onboard and holding up the boarding process, etc.
That said, these particular regulations don't seem particularly onerous.
The problem is that prices should be transparent. When you have unexpected charges for luggage, then transparency is lost, and the market mechanism becomes defective to a great extent.
Arguably the prices are already transparent, but I think you're arguing that they should be simple and by extension, that complex pricing structures violate the free market. I would argue that complex pricing structures are advantageous for savvy customers and airlines alike, and that unsavvy customers (like me, at least when it comes to flying) should expect to pay a premium for simpler pricing structures.
An analogy would be purchasing a PC; savvy folks can save hundreds while unsavvy people trying to do the same are very likely to accidentally compromise on things that are important to them.
I don't think the solution is regulation; I think it's to teach common sense.
> unsavvy customers ... should expect to pay a premium for simpler pricing structures.
That is both inaccurate (with regards to airlines--you can't tell how much of a flat-fee ticket with baggage included is devoted to that baggage, because ticket prices are widely variable by airline and time, so straight-across comparison is not reliable) and . . . well, just awful; "do your research so you don't miss out on cheaper alternatives" is a reality sometimes, but saying that this is a desirable property of an economic system seems like an inhumane and, if taken to extremes, systemically dysfunctional position to take. It seems like it incentivizes deliberate complexity in pricing structures--and the theoretical backpressure against those trends (competition by organizations with simpler structures)
seems to only very rarely be the equal of its opponent.
The alternative isn't "hold everyone's hand through all cost decisions"; the alternative is don't make things worse/more confusing unless you absolutely must.
> saying that this is a desirable property of an economic system seems like an inhumane and, if taken to extremes, systemically dysfunctional position to take.
You have it backwards. The problem with simplicity is that your options for a PC become Performance, Mainstream and Economy. If Economy would have been sufficient except for the storage, sorry, you'll have to pay +$300 for Mainstream (which also has a faster processor and more memory) even though faster storage by itself would only have been +$100.
There is efficiency in not paying for what you don't need, but it has intrinsic complexity. Or you can just buy Performance, not have to worry about anything, but pay +$800.
Having the simple options available is good because some people value time more than money. Having the complex options available is good because some people value money more than time (or can make a complex decision in a small amount of time).
Having said that, the charges for checked bags are still ridiculous, but only because the fees exceed the airlines' cost for carrying the bags by such a large amount. Fortunately they're likely to be destroyed by the price comparison sites now listing the fees next to the ticket price, which should reintroduce price competition for the checked bag fee and either get the fee reduced/eliminated or benefit the customer by giving those who don't need to check a bag a disproportionate discount.
Or some enterprising airline will realize they can profit from selling the empty space in their planes not being used for checked bags to someone like FedEx to carry packages. Then FedEx will realize they can open a storefront in the airport and charge less than the airlines to ship your luggage and you'll be able to pay FedEx $15 to pay the airline $10 to check your bag, instead of paying the airline $30. Then the airlines will just charge $14.
> The alternative isn't "hold everyone's hand through all cost decisions"; the alternative is don't make things worse/more confusing unless you absolutely must.
If you're confident and in fact the entire industry is moving in the wrong direction, then you should probably invest as much as you can afford in an airline that is offering simpler plans. For me, I'll trust that the airlines' leaders are the experts in their own market.
> saying that this is a desirable property of an economic system seems like an inhumane and, if taken to extremes, systemically dysfunctional position to take.
"Choice" (i.e., "freedom") _is_ a desirable property. Sometimes it means people make inefficient choices (per their values); in general, the proper response to this observation is to teach people how to choose efficiently.
>If you're confident and in fact the entire industry is moving in the wrong direction, then you should probably invest as much as you can afford in an airline that is offering simpler plans.
I think people should be heavily criticized for making arguments like this -- it's entirely done in bad faith. You're presenting a fairy tale, a piece of advice that is completely un-actionable for a huge majority of people. What is this person supposed to do, when
(a) No such airline exists
(b) What sort of marginal impact can <$1000 (presumably the most that can be afforded for this by the majority of people) even have in achieving actual change?
If anything, complaining about it to others (online or elsewhere) probably has more efficacy than doing the above.
(a.1) Of course there are differences in the complexity of airlines' pricing structures. To claim that all airlines' menus are equally complex is an extraordinary claim.
(a.2) The extent to which it is hard to find an airline with a very simple pricing structure testifies to the economic infeasibility of these structures unless the OP found a market inefficiency (which was overlooked by the entire industry), in which case he should exploit it to the tune of millions of dollars.
(b) Assuming the OP is in fact an airline industry visionary, when other airlines see him making money hand over fist, they'll change their ways.
> The extent to which it is hard to find an airline with a very simple pricing structure testifies to the economic infeasibility of these structures
Perhaps. As I've said elsewhere, another explanation is that it's easier to collude than compete, especially in markets with entry-barrier-induced low participant counts.
The "it came to be this way therefore the market has revealed the optimum" claim misses frequent realities of limited market control/visibility, greed/laziness (i.e. collusion), and intermediate or catch-up evolutionary behavior (i.e. it's quite hard, absent lots of historical evidence often lacking in recent markets, to tell whether something represents a stabilizing optimum or a state of flux as emergent behaviors pursue changing realities, and there are many reasons to presume the latter).
Have you ever not known how much your bag costs? Whenever I book a ticket, it usually says how much a bag costs, and there is a link to the extensive rules of what can go in.
But when you search for a ticket do you get to select how many bags you are checking? That is the key to having this issue settled correctly by the market.
Never been on an airline that charges for overhead bags. I would guess Ryan Air does that by reputation but never heard of a US airline doing that. Just checked out google flights and there is it.
I think having separate bag fees actually increases price transparency — it’s right there in black and white when you purchase tickets. And since the price is separated out from the price of the tickets it’s harder to play a game wherein the real bag fee is hidden. And, airlines can compete on bag fees.
Having to pay bag fees sucks but then again, before separate bag fees we were still paying them, we just didn’t know how much of the ticket price they really were.
It's not transparent. Unless you have the ability to construct your necessities at your destination, you can't fly without your stuff. There should be a standard definition of what a flight should include (one checked, 1 person+1carryon). What would be more transparent is to discount those who aren't flying with a carry on or checked bag.
> we just didn’t know how much of the ticket price they really were.
We did realize how much they were apart of the ticket. The definition of what people brought on the plane was figured into by planning at the airline. You can't just pay for more carry-ons and bags than the airline allows. Right now what we have is an artificial price drop and it's being supplemented by fees. (Airlines are pissed that they can't hide the YQ from the price anymore)
Some people just bring less stuff, or have less in general. In general someone going for a shorter amount of time will take less stuff, why should they pay the same amount if they're not carrying the same amount?
There are numerous entirely private systems that require such subsidy; are you claiming that any amount of subsidy for others' habits is objectionable (i.e. the libertarian hardline)? Or are you making some other point?
I'm happy to subsidize, you know, low-income moms who need nutrition benefits. Why the heck should I subsidize people who pack too much on domestic trips?
What's your threshold for packing "too much"? Do you believe that everybody should be able to get by with an under-seat bag? Or are you pretending that the overhead bins are large enough for everyone to bring a standard piece of carry-on luggage?
Either way, it's still possible to check smaller pieces of luggage, and if most passengers could do that economically then loading and unloading the plane would be a lot quicker, saving the airlines non-trivial costs.
Without fees, the airline is minimizing the cost and you're cost averaging. With the fee-based structure, it's really a massive cost increase and a service/quality decrease.
From what you said it's abit like saying that you don't want to subsidize the police via your taxes because you never use them.
Spirit airlines makes like 10% profit margin. Forcing them to absorb baggage fees isn't going to come out of their margins, it's going to come out of increases in base fare.
As to subsidies: you usually can't control whether you need the police or not. You generally can control how much you pack. My wife and I didn't even pack a check-in on when we took the kid to Disney World recently. Why should I pay more for people who have to have … whatever the hell it is that people pack in a checked bag for a domestic flight.
I've never heard of a plane ticket that doesn't at a minimum allow you to carry on a bag that is small enough to fit under the seats for free. That is enough for necessities for a short trip.
The airline industry has a lot of issues, but it's not a monopoly. In fact, the reason we no longer have free bags is that the industry is in a state of price war, due to competition. Airlines want to reduce their ticket costs as much as possible, and this leads to little margin on the tickets, so they save costs by not giving free bags.
This helps stratify the market as well, because those who travel light (mainly business people and people who fly a lot) now pay less than they used to. Those who fly irregularly (i.e., tourists) are more willing to pay the fees.
>Is the airline industry disrupt-able enough for market forces to make changes?
It has been disrupted already ... many times. Some disruptions came as a result of relaxation of certain regulations, such as allowing twin engine jets to fly over the oceans, or not forcing airlines to fly direct routes. There's also the revolution around using deep statistical modeling for capacity and route planning and scheduling. There's the business models of RyanAir and Emirates ... I mean, this industry has changed quite a bit.
Flying is also cheapest AND safest it has ever been (though more uncomfortable). Seems like market forces are working just fine.
Are they though? How come the US doesn't have the equivalent of a Emirates/Singapore quality level airline? You can't tell me there is no demand for that level of service by business folk?
Laymen's explanation - there are a limited number of routes that can physically be established and those who have the routes exhibit rent seeking behavior with only just a small amount of competition. In other words an oligopoly.
Those airlines already exist, and would be eager to operate in USA and provide us with service superior to that provided by domestic carriers. The "market failure" is regulations that prevent foreign carriers from serving domestic routes.
Emirates is a state-owned enterprise and there are a lot of accusations that it's subsidized by the state through below-market borrowing.
Your question is also kind of like asking why HP laptops are lower quality than Apple laptops. Emirates uses its Dubai base to serve primarily lucrative international flights, just like Apple targets the premium end of the market. That doesn't mean that HP is in a market segment without competition, however. Rather, it targets a cost-sensitive portion of the market where people aren't willing to pay extra for quality.
My view is that is the Emiratis want to squander their money on giving at-cost fuel and basically-zero-interest loans to their flag carrier, that's on them.
It's not as though the US air market isn't heavily protected. You'll note that foreign carriers like Emirates can't fly domestic routes. If I fly Qantas to NYC, half the plane gets off in LA and nobody else can get on. Which is part of why "Qantas ticket" is the ancient Yolŋu word for "financial ruin".
> why HP laptops are lower quality than Apple laptops.
So why can I choose to buy either an Apple laptop or an HP one in the US, but don't have the choice to fly on Emirates from Chicago to NYC? I think you missed my point entirely. There is a market of people willing to pay for superior quality airline service, there is just no supply for it, because of regulation.
We don't have it due to the business culture of America.
They're agressively seeking to increase profit margins.
That meant that expensing has stripped away the ability to book business class tickets. (That is arguable if that's a good idea or not given the complexity of tickets)
The aggressiveness about seeking higher profit margins at all costs has also meant that the money that would be available for those things are considered to be "fat".
The closest that you have with the Singapore/Emirates setup is United Polaris and Global Services.
Regulations are certainly part of the story, but make no mistake, regulation don't work without market buy-in. If a regulation stands in opposition to market forces it will fail miserably. For example, car fuel efficiency regulations tend to lead to cheating, and non-compliance (which leads to non-enforcement because regulators give up on them) if they stray too far from reality. Furthermore regulations don't innovate. It took aviation engineers to design and build super-safe passenger jets, and airlines (along with engineers) to maintain them - bureaucrats don't do any of that. But yes, regulations have a place.
The FAA and the NTSB are the reason there is market buy-in to begin with. Consumers would never have adopted air travel and driven global economies of scale to the extent that they have without those two agencies reassuring the public that they wouldnt go up in a giant fireball along with 200 others just to go to Cabo.
>It took aviation engineers to design and build super-safe passenger jets, and airlines (along with engineers) to maintain them - bureaucrats don't do any of that.
Companies won't do that unless forced to by regulations. Also, your post that I replied to implied that it was all market forces.
Companies don't care about people, for one and for two, the problem is that safety is one of those things that companies will gladly brush right against the edge of for the sake of profits.
To draw a point of comparison many companies know that their infrastructure is vulnerable to hacking or data leaks. The reason why they don't fix the problem in the first place is because they've ran the cost analysis and realized that the cost of securing their system is more than the potential ramifications of losing customer data.
1. Wow, WizzAir, and Norweigan air has created a lot of competition on the airline front and price wars. EDIT: Forgot to mention their point to point system has also benefited many towns that wouldn't dream of traveling to Europe.
I've flow with Norwegian Air and I actually liked them. They're like the Southwest of transatlantic flights. The legacy carrier's response has been "we'll just lower our prices" and decrease benefits on all sides. (I.e. basic econ)
2. The newer carriers have had the money to lease new airplanes that are much more fuel efficient. I think that's where the legacy carriers have done does bad planning for the last decade. (They're just not buying 787s and they're depending on ERJ/CRJs)
Problem is those low cost carriers also huge prices away. They’re not always that much cheaper than the legacy carriers - especially if you’re looking at premium econ.
Depends. I frequently see after the flight is priced out. Norweigan+partners can outprice the legacy carriers. Many times they're exactly the same price. Sometime's they're a better value. (I'm looking at Southwest's ticket flexibility as a standard feature)
Market forces have made changes. They've pretty much demonstrated that people make decisions based on the cheapest base fare. So the airlines have mostly (and even the newer airlines have moved in this direction over time) added baggage fees, board early fees, significant change fees, seat selection fees, etc.
The frequent fliers are mostly immune to all this and the family visiting grandma is often going to pick the absolute cheapest flight.
Southwest has continued to grow over decades of airline bankruptcies, mergers, and pricing shenanigans. If you are a first class or business traveler, that is what the other airlines are focusing on, go with them. If you are just a regular flyer, southwest focuses on your demographic. Things they do that almost no other US carrier does. Two checked bags are free, good to cheapest fares, same price whether you buy a one-way or round trip, cancel your flight anytime and get full credit for it on your next purchase. These are great features I use all the time. I always fly them if they have non-stop flights to where I need to go.
>They've pretty much demonstrated that people make decisions based on the cheapest base fare.
Nope. For example the business sector market doesn't necessarily look for cheapest fares. For that market (which is quite big) there are other considerations, like minimizing layovers, in-flight comfort, lounge access, priority boarding, etc.
Yes, I should have said mainstream personal travel. As someone who travels mostly on business, I'm not the one picking the absolutely cheapest base fee.
On the other hand, those business travelers mostly don't even care about early boarding or baggage fees anyway because they're either expensing them or get them for free because of status.
You are very fortunate. I often flew trans-Atlantic for a former company and their travel secretary was under instructions to find the absolute cheapest fare without consideration. So I occasionally ended-up with weird connections in Manchester or Newark instead of a non-stop from Dublin.
Not entirely - in-flight wifi, extra legroom, lie-flat business class, and seatback-controllable entertainment & food service are innovations that have spread across the industry because carriers found that customers will switch airlines to get access to them. In many cases they're even moneymakers, with customers willing to pay extra for them.
I think that the industry has generally found that price-discrimination is a powerful tool, though. The business traveler flying Sydney<->SFO on the corporate dime will pay the extra several thousand for lie-flat seats; the upper-middle-class family with bored kids will pay for wifi and tablet holders; but keeping those (and baggage, prime seat selection, early check-in, etc.) optional keeps flying accessible to the working-class laborer who needs to fly home for a funeral.
Fully agree. We're really seeing two divergent trends.
Fees for everything for the price-sensitive masses.
And, for business travelers with status (who are at a minimum less price sensitive and typically don't pay most of the base level fees anyway), somewhat better seating as a perk, much better seating for upgrades/upsells, a premium class of airline clubs among the base level (e.g. United's Polaris Clubs), etc.
And, as you say, I don't really have a problem with all this because it makes flying much more affordable for those that find the most bargain economy ticket a big expense. While I might personally enjoy it more, you don't really want a world where lie-flat seats are required on all 5+ hour flights.
This fall I recently started flying again after having not flown since 1999, and I've been making it a point to only fly Southwest because they're the only airline that's even remotely consumer friendly.
The opposite of "monopoly" is not "disruption" but instead "competition." Disruption moves a market equilibrium, usually due to a fundamental change in technology. But even a market in a steady-state equilibrium are subject to market forces so long as they are sufficiently competitive.
E.g. Amazon is disrupting retail. But even before Amazon existed, retail was highly competitive, with market forces driving down prices. (Indeed, there is a good argument that Amazon is decreasing competition even as it disrupts the market.)
I remember flying under the old heavily regulated airline system, where the FAA set routes, etc. Flights were often half empty. That practically never happens now. Flights are much more convenient and cheaper as a result.
>> this is one of those things that the market should decide.
The market can only decide when consumers are fully informed of the charges before they purchase the ticket. If Expedia modifies their web site to ask if you have baggage and adds baggage fees to the displayed total then consumers are fully informed.
> this is one of those things that the market should decide
It's easy to see that airlines are being too greedy here and taking benefit of no option left for customer. It's not market price as most people just look for the cheapest ticket. After buying it, it's basically a monopoly.
I really wish they'd charge for carry-ons and make checkins free. I hate travelling in American where people are rushing into the plane, hauling huge suitcases. Flying in Asia recently was bliss without these huge bags in the overhead bins.
True. Restricting which things an airline can charge for or not creates dead-weight loss.
Personally, I like when airlines charge a reasonable amount for seat selection. I get really claustrophobic being on the inside seat, so with airlines that charge for it, I always get an aisle seat which is worth more to me than the money. And then people who don't care at all get a slightly subsidized ticket and sit in the middle/window seat.
I agree, right now there are a plethora of upgrades from a base ticket. Things like, checked-baggage, priority boarding, emergency row / extra leg-room, etc.
There were times when I sprung for priority boarding or emergency row seating, and times where I didn't - and in both cases, I appreciated the option. Let people decide if they care enough about extra leg room that they are willing to throw and that extra $30 for the better seat versus not (because if free, EVERYONE would want extra leg room).
I think the shocking part is these regulations being generally pro-passenger and not another lobbyist authored money grab.
Maybe legislation like this is passed and signed all the time, but it seems shocking to me because all of the articles I read are about laws bought and paid for by one lobbying group or another.
> I'm glad. I don't like paying baggage fees (in fact, I've started to travel much more with only a carry-on partly to avoid the fees) but this is one of those things that the market should decide.
Yeah, that sounds like a classic case of "not my problem, therefore it shouldn't be regulated".
If some group of passagers have no choice but to fly and also have a hard minimum of baggage they need, there is no market force to keep baggage prices low. So a pure market solution would have them climb ever higher.
> It's an extra revenue stream for airlines
The original rationale for baggage fees is that added baggage makes plane operation more expensive. I guess, treating it as an "extra revenue stream" is at least honest, but is something that can be justified a lot less in regards if usefulness for society.
If you don’t live near a major hub, there is about as much of a “market” for which airline you can fly to get to your destination as there is your ISP.
Everything should be transparent, so that when people search for flights, they should enter how much checked baggage they want, and all the prices they see will reflect that.
Given two flights A and B, it could be the case that A is cheaper for the person who doesn't want checked luggage, whereas B is cheaper for someone who wants to check in a suitcase.
Agreed. I strongly dislike Trump, but this bill seems very reasonable, some pretty run-of-the-mill regulations that most people would agree with, or at least be OK with.
>>The story of this law has been dominated largely by what isn't in it: no restrictions on what airlines can charge for baggage or change fees.
That's a market decision. It really irks me when people demand price controls for innocuous things. All the airlines will do is find another way to make you eat the cost. This should become area where one airline can one up other competition wise.
It's not entirely a market decision due to earlier government regulation: baggage fees are not subject to excise tax, so if an airline could charge $5 for your ticket and $600 for your bag they would be way ahead, even if you'd rather not have checked it.
For everyone west of the Hudson, going to JFK or LGA to save a little on fare is definitely Not Worth It.
- If a friend/family is driving you, that's at least 2-3 extra hours of driving for them, plus extra time buffer up front for NYC traffic, multiplied by rush hour depending on flight time.
- If you take train or bus it will be many, many more hours for you.
- If you take cab or Uber you'll probably lose any savings on the cab fare
- If you drive your own car, long-term parking is substantially more expensive, plus extra travel time the day of and traffic considerations from above car-pool case.
Hard to overstate how much worse it is going to NYC airports from west of the Hudson River.
Don’t fly: use a video conference, or just forego contact altogether. Travel by other means: drive, or take a train—-certainly viable in the Northeast. Use another airport: you said Newark, there are (at least) two other major airports in the New York area alone.
People usually have multiple choices available. Certainly they have alternatives to flying United Airlines out of Newark. That someone does not like these other choices does not mean they do not exist.
Luckily you live in SF where you can find a direct flight to Hawaii from half a dozen different airlines so this theoretical monopoly problem will never happen to you for this particular problem.
And those choices include choosing to protest the crappy state of things and suggesting it needs to change rather than happily working around all the crappiness and accepting it as inevitable.
I really hate flying in airplanes in America. I avoid them whenever possible. You cannot go through a line without being molested by the TSA. I really hate being touched, and really really hate it when people touch me below the belt and then try to touch me above the belt (serious OCD).
When I do get the additional pat down (which is almost every time because those scanners are useless and have a false positive rate so high that they should just be replaced with a random number generator) I give the TSA person specific instructions to replace their gloves for each part of the pat down. They do ... now ... but haven't in the past (public outrage has made them a lot nicer ... but their jobs should still go away and we should just go back to metal detectors like in the 90s).
Also America is the only country I've flow through which still makes you take off your shoes. Fuck that nonsense.
"Also America is the only country I've flow through which still makes you take off your shoes. Fuck that nonsense."
Agreed. That is the dumbest thing ever, especially because the elderly and children can get out of it, and so can people who pay more. I wonder if I ran on a platform of "You can keep your shoes on when you fly!" how many votes I'd get.
There aren't any quasi-monopolies in the airline industry though, are there? I've always found it interesting that the airline industry is very competitive yet airlines haven't gotten any better or cheaper in decades.
This isn’t correct - since deregulation airfare has consistently gone down - 17% over the last two decades. That trend has slowed as we basically have gotten to the point where the cost per available seat mile has really can’t get any lowere without firing half the pilots and skimping on maintainence. Airplanes are being used until they can’t fly any more.
You should know that AEI (the source you linked) is not trustworthy on these issues.
David Frum was fired by AEI for daring to say that Obamacare might be good, due to "donor pressure" (cite: Axios). (Notwithstanding the fact that some conservatives have tried to deny that's the reason AEI fired Frum)
AEI uses motivated reasoning (you might call it propaganda) to achieve their goals - pro-business, pro-billionaire, anti-worker.
Anyway. Take any pro-deregulation paper you read from AEI with a HUGE grain of salt.
Your response is absolutely politics. You don't debate any of the factual information presented - but simply cast doubt due to a difference of politics and ideology.
Your assertion by pointing to a article from The Nation (the oldest progressive journal in the US, as they proudly quote) just emphasis your partisan take.
Regardless, In this case - the article is correct, as facts are simply facts, and not partisan. Adjusted for inflation, travel costs roughly half of what it did at the time of deregulation. Since hearing facts from people you disagree seems to offend, I would suggest a separate source on the path of deregulation, the instability it brought, but then the ultimate success - check out Hard Landing by Thomas Petzinger.
A newspaper, even one with a bias (as they all have), is still a more objective source than an avowedly conservative-libertarian think tank that fires people for having a different view on an issue.
Source A) I looked up the real cost decline of airfare over two decades, correlated it to infatuation, tracked the entire industry through multiple bankruptcies and re-capitalization stages. The numbers show that airfare has decreased by half over the last two years.
Source B) Airfare is now more expensive then it ever has been!
Both of these statements were literally published. The first was published by AEI. The second by the Denver Post. One was objectively true. It was not the Denver Post.
There is a reason anyone who follows aviation rolls their eyes before reading any newspaper ever on the airline business.
Tickets have gotten dramatically cheaper over that period. A round trip ticket to Europe from the US costs under $300. A ticket to Australia can be had for about $600. In Europe, prices have dropped so much that planes are cost-competitive with buses between
many neighboring countries.
Part of this is because of reductions in services provided to basic economy fares, but ultimately even similar tickets are now about 40% cheaper than they were in the 90s. It's an amazing time to travel.
Air travel is still one area ironically the US is way more regulated then overseas. With the exception of two airports (if I recall correctly), airports are still government owned. It’s only been since the 1980s that carriers could fly between two separate cities without govnrnnental approval.
That said, having flown a few times in India and Europe on some truest loathsome airlines, it works. Airfares are going down or are holding constant at a time when all of the other stuff - housing, health care have skyrocketed.
I agree, but flight search tools need to start factoring this in their price results (but it's not always simple, some budget airlines charge for large carry on bags, and the size limits vary)
No one is asking for price controls, we’re asking for price transparency. The problem with baggage fees etc. is that they are tacked on after you’ve gone through the rigmarole of purchasing your ticket, and the advertised prices are just lies.
I see one of the new regs is this:
>bans e-cigarettes from planes;
You already can't bring vapes in checked luggage, so what are the nicotine addicted supposed to do? Switch to cigarettes at their destination, since they can't take their vapes along with them? This might be trivial to some folks, but I know people for whom this will be an absolute nightmare.
Anyway, this is easy for the non-addicted to see as a non-issue or a minor change, but for those who have nicotine habits, this makes airplanes that much more of a hellish experience than they already are. Worse, it actively punishes the folks trying to get away from smoking analog cigarettes, because it makes it nigh impossible for them to take their substitute when they travel..
Yes thank you! My apologies, I misunderstood the regulation. The article reported it as a ban, and I thought that meant they were no longer allowed to be carried on board. AFAIK actually using them has been banned for awhile? But perhaps it was only de facto banned.
I believe they were banned by airlines specifically but I am not sure if they were federally banned - meaning I am not sure if you could actually get fined for just using one.
Ecigs are incredibly annoying to me personally. The vapor is usually some sickly sweet cloud that gets everywhere and I usually smell like jolly rancher or worthers original after being near one. If someone is that addicted, there's gums and patches that should be sufficient.
There's over a hundred people sharing that space, and we need to be courteous to everyone else for the small amount of time we're crammed together.
I don't think anyone was suggesting actually vaping on the plane next to other people - I'm pretty sure that was never cool with flight attendants and/or other passengers.
The question is: if I am not allowed to bring (potentially expensive and/or hard-to-find) e-cigs on board, what do I do when I land? Can I put them in checked luggage? Do I have to throw them out if I forget they're on me? Too bad?
I don't have any answers but I personally use an e-cig to keep me from going back to the real thing (real cigarettes that is).
> There's over a hundred people sharing that space, and we need to be courteous to everyone else for the small amount of time we're crammed together.
How do you think this actually change impacts people _while_ on the plane since vapes have already been banned from carry-ons? Your comment doesn't seem to be relevant to this change.
The reason for the e-cig ban in checked baggage is due to the chance of combustion, as if it exploded in your carry-on, it can be extinguished.
It's similar to the Samsung Note ban not too long ago, even though no Samsung Notes ever exploded in-flight, they had known problems with the battery. Air travel is crazy about not taking chances, and many e-cigs have shady bargain-bin lithium batteries.
I don't understand all those bans on e-cigarettes that pop up. They're essentially harmless, as opposed to "analog ones". I get that some people don't like to see any kind of smoke in general, but actual smoking is a public health problem, and IMO society should be supportive of e-cigarettes as a quite decent solution to this problem.
Irrespective of the health effect and fire hazard, I think it is reasonable to not allow passengers to use a device that generate a strong smell in a confined space where fellow passengers do not have the choice to move away (and I would assume common decency wouldn't require a law).
The devices look to my eye to be suspiciously close to a dispersal device for chemical or biological weapons just as they are. With a fully charged battery, some modifications, and some TATP in place of the propylene glycol, they would also make a decent fuselage-breaching bomb. I could see how they might be considered a security risk. I have heard about vape-battery explosions, just as I have heard about cell phone and laptop battery explosions.
I think they could easily be checked in baggage with the same precautions as a firearm. Battery out, fluid reservoir empty, and in a flight-approved, locked container.
That said, I was on a cave tour once and some jackass was vaping inside the cave. The guide reminded him "no smoking" and he kept on puffing, explaining, "I'm not smoking. It's a vape." It was already too late to remove him from the tour.
People didn't ban cigarette smoking specifically because of the cigarettes. It was because it was the most common means for people to blithely pollute the local air. Vape fluid might be less overtly toxic and more pleasant-smelling than cigarette smoke, but that doesn't mean I want your candy-flavored solvent precipitating out of the air onto my clothes. When you're in an enclosed space without openable ventilation windows, like a cave or airliner cabin or elevator, don't smoke, don't intentionally fart, don't take your shoes off to air out your stinky socks, and don't vape.
Part of it is the perpetual wishful thinking of nicotine addicts who think that since it is technically not smoking so they can do it anywhere. I recall radio ads billing this "benefit" even and speaking of the satisfaction of a "quitting smoking" device.
That was kind of a selling point, and what I'm essentially suggesting is it should be the case to some extent, out of concern for public health benefits. You shouldn't be able to vape everywhere, but e-cigs shouldn't also be more banned than regular cigs.
(No conflict of interest here; I'm not, and never was a smoker.)
"Analog cigarettes" - I will be adding that to my lexicon.
For instance, 'just think, there was a time when you could smoke proper analog cigarettes on Concorde with the flight attendants able to sell you more, by the box of 200, duty free. They even had books of matches spare to help you light them.'
They don't have the same harmful chemicals as "analog" cigarettes, but the combustion by-products are still not something a rational person would want in their lungs.
I wouldn't argue that they're harmless but my understanding is that combustion is not involved, and that is exactly why they are presumed to be _less_ harmful than smoking.
This is correct. The mixture is almost always propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, nicotine, and flavoring. I don't know of any negative effects of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, and as long as you don't use a carcinogenic flavoring (they exist) your biggest problem will likely be nicotine.
I don't think nicotine is good for you, but vaporized nicotine seems much less dangerous than smoking a cigarette.
Even glycol and glycerin vapor are probably not a good idea to inhale. They could hardly be as bad as smoking cigarettes, but so far basically anything you breathe in that isn't air turns out to be a bad idea once we study it thoroughly.
As many have replied, taking it is apparently still legal, just not smoking it on board.
I also assumed it a total ban, and I wondered if the tobacco lobby had something to do with it: legend has it that the govt wanted to ban bringing lighters into the cabin after 9/11, but the tobacco lobby intervened. And guess what, nope they were not on the banned items list.
I wonder about this too. As a long-time vaper who actually quit smoking with them, this makes airline travel a nightmare. Do I mail my vape to my destination? Buy a new one on the way? Attempt to sneak it on with the horror that possibly opens up?
Seriously, doing that is often extremely difficult. For many in tech, and people oriented / facing work, there is a cycle of stress and or anxiety relief that amplifies when quitting.
Ability to create and interact with people in difficult or higher pressure scenarios are all, can be, very significantly impacted.
For many, really quiting takes a significant life event, or a substantial period of time away from the triggers as well as the cigarettes.
Of course people vary. Some can do it cold, others patch, others can use drugs like Chantix.
In my own scenario, Chantix was very bad news. Did not work, and I had those side effects. Big. Was scary and all escalated over a matter of a couple weeks.
I had started in the military, and quitting was a serious struggle. Vapor pens got me off tobacco, and the benefits were more or less immediate! Overall well being shot up fast, and continues on a slow ramp up.
As harm reduction, I have little question in my mind. The two are almost not comparable. Night and day type stuff
I have been diluting the percentages down and it has reached the point where I am going longer times without thinking about it much. All that with marginal inpact on create and people handling / interaction too.
Life has been tough on a number of fronts, basically denying me the time / space needed to deal hard core.
Vaping ranges from a fairly tepid thing to obnoxious big clouds where the room ends up a sticky mist!
Mutual consideration points to some regulation, and so far I see nothing unreasonable.
People judging others harshly on various vices has never been a thing I find productive. (Not implying you are, just making a germane point here) Minimizing harm, making sure people have options, treatment when they get into trouble are all much more productive and sane policy.
In basic terms, vaping is not even in the same class as smoking is. The big cloud people do approach that, and a few of them going to town can make a mess on par with smokers generally, but doing that is an edge case.
The vast majority will do it in the same way people use wine, as an example. Real addiction will creep up on people. Happens, and the very last thing they need is a toxic culture adding difficulty to what will already be difficult enough. Just embracing harm reduction would have a hard to miss, positive impact.
Not really. It sometimes makes more people try to quit, but the problems with quitting still remain. It isn't always a rational decision to start or continue smoking.
What would actually help more folks would be better research to quitting. Better drugs and other methods to help folks quit (I couldn't tolerate Chantrix either). Making these things available to people for free. Not just "free for 4-6 weeks once" but free for as long as it takes people to quit, for as many attempts as they need to quit. If you are poor, some of the fear is that a patch might not work, and then suddenly you have no money for cigs.
The cost of patches and gum, etc, is definitely an issue for some of us. I've tried and failed quitting smoking several times cold turkey and can't afford all the other stuff.
I am currently tapering down by diluting the juice. Yhat is working nicely.
Unlike tobacco, I am not in a hurry. Ending the health hazard was a source of constant angst. Today, it is about reducing cost and moving toward a more pleasure centered experience. Just getting rid of triggers.
The SMOK brand refillable vapor pens are great, not a lot of money.
Strength is there, at half the cost to start.
Good luck. Don't let people tell you it isn't rough. It is. I have kicked supposedly harder things before. Sucked, but doable.
I've actually quit for several months a couple of times, but the first really bad day made me run straight back to it. I guess part of what I need to do is educate myself on better coping mechanisms.
Infinix or Fit. Get the high strength nicotine salt juice.
There is a shift in how you deal with things. It is like an off brand smoke, or the difference between a menthol and regular.
It passes. Takes a day, maybe two. Once it has passed, you will find going to a real tobacco feels bad. It always was, but you became inured to it over time.
The other thing you will find is your craving isn't necessarily for nicotine. It's the extras, and of course, those are bad too. All an ugly cycle.
Scrape $50 together. That's enough for a unit, couple refillable chambers, and some good juice. Again, nicotine salt is where it's at. Get the highest strength, and use the device in moderation. You will self-select everything else quickly after that initial shift.
Then, no matter what, stay with it for a time. It will only take a few successful times for the psychological impact to fade and confidence grow.
From there, you've got a much healthier cost management problem. It's a nice problem to have.
They are in places. So what? That's not really the issue.
I don't need any help personally. For me, I'm in a good place, few worries.
Others may need help, and they may even make that known too. Posing that question isn't really how to get at the matter of help. For that to actually happen and be germane, understanding needs to come first.
I put what I did here to that end. Same with this comment.
>allows the Justice Department, Homeland Security, and other federal law enforcement agencies to hack or shoot down privately owned drones if they deem them a threat
they just kinda slipped that one in there... the rest seem pretty benign. Maybe this one:
>increases the penalties for interfering with cabin crew or flight crew
is there any reason to believe that the current penalties aren't working and that increasing them will fix it?
You joke, but there is actual serious regulatory uncertainty with space launches - the Air Force is trying to hand over more and more regulatory authority to civilians, and there's a serious question of which responsibilities belong to the DoC (through the FCC, for historical reasons) and which to the DoT (through the FAA).
There already are some spaceports in the US. So I guess it kind of makes sense to have some oversight. Although I assumed this was just covered by the FAA since they're basically just airplanes at this point.
I strongly disagree with the power flight attendants have been given. There is zero recourse when a flight attendant makes a decision, or more often than not, denies you something, flat out lies, or treats you like crap. You can complain to the airline but good luck with that. This new law seems to me that if you even argue with a flight attendant you're kicked off the plane and fined.
- prohibits airlines from "bumping" passengers who've already boarded a plane;
- requires airlines to refund passengers for "services they paid for but did not receive";
It seems to me these points potentially balance out some of the power that flight attendants have, however.
Normally I wouldn’t recommend arguing with a flight attendant but just yesterday I was on a flight from PMC - PUQ (Chile on Latam) where I and another passenger had a boarding pass with seat 16-J. Because the other person boarded first the flight attendant basically told me “too bad”. I was standing in the aisle holding up traffic with nowhere to go. I had to get pretty blunt with her to find me another seat or I would continue standing in the aisle holding up the boarding process. What do you know, after I became serious they found me another seat.
This brings up a good point: I would agree with extra penalties for disrupting behaviour while the airplane is underway, especially take off and landing. Boarding and disembarking not so much.
The bloomberg article links an inc.com [0] article outlining some incidents of people interfering with flight crew. None of these seem like the sort of thing where the perpetrator stops and weights the potential punishment vs how much they want to interfere with the crew. They mostly seem to be people acting irrationally for one reason or another. One person was drunk, one person decided to respond to a request to put her tray table away by calling the flight attendant the n word.
I like nearly all the things on that list. As someone else mentioned, most airlines already do most of these things; I'm not completely sure that a change in the law was necessary. However, US airlines have a pretty terrible reputation, deservedly in my opinion. Maybe this change will trigger some improvement in the industry? Lets hope.
It is basically a parliamentary procedure hack. An urgent issue can be tacked on to an existing bill that is already farther along in the process. Streamlines the passage.
There is also a bit of game theory going on here, by attaching a must pass item to the bill you can get other less favorable items passed at the same time.
Since there's no mechanism for conditional voting or enforcing promises, a lot of horse-trading among politicians happens within the context of a single voted-upon item.
Nah. It's just a requirement to study the issue from a safety perspective.[1]
"SEC. 577. Minimum dimensions for passenger seats.
(a) In general.—Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, and after providing notice and an opportunity for comment, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration shall issue regulations that establish minimum dimensions for passenger seats on aircraft operated by air carriers in interstate air transportation or intrastate air transportation, including minimums for seat pitch, width, and length, and that are necessary for the safety of passengers."
That just means an aircraft with a tight seat pitch has to pass the aircraft evacuation time test.[1] Some of those tests may need to be rerun. Which is risky; people are injured in evacuation tests.
The standards need to be re-evaluated, though, because people are fatter.
You can use a mix of un-uniformed soldiers and police force, led by emergency rescuers, to test the evacuation. No civilians need to be harmed to test efficiency.
Umm.. no one is commenting on the Office of Spaceports?? This is really freaking awesome! I hope that they get it right. The spaceport in New Mexico is a great idea, I just hope things like this get more growth as we commercialize and exploit the vast resources in space.
Most airlines have been shrinking their seat widths to dimensions that are less than the average shoulder span of American men. I'm wondering if the requirement to set seat sizes might help there.
Also, the recent incidences of airlines bumping seated passengers in favor of their own staff makes me think the new rules are needed.
But 1200 pages! What else is in there? Did we just create a new bureaucracy-in-a-bureaucracy again?
It's the entire FAA Reauthorization Act. So it basically specifies everything that the FAA (which is a large federal department) is authorized to do or required to do over the next few years.
This law is a bunch of generally-good regulations that address various sorts of minor dysfunctions affecting air travel lately. What really annoys me is how it's pitched on inc.com.
Let's look at the inc.com headline, which I quote in full: "President Trump Just Signed a Law That Radically Changes Life for Airline Passengers, Flight Attendants, and Airlines (Almost Nobody Even Noticed) In the middle of the Supreme Court fight, the White House held a Friday afternoon signing ceremony for this new, 1,200-page law"
For God's sake, this spin is ridiculous. This wasn't some radical part of Trump's agenda. There's no evidence that the law's signing was intended to deceive the public. The regulations themselves are decent tweaks to existing practice that are consistent with common sense. You'd get a very different impression reading the headline.
Granted, I never paid much attention to inc.com before, but I think I'll find a way to pay even less attention to it now.
I hope the eventual seat pitch/width standards are reasonable. I don't think a seat pitch below 33" or width below 19" are tenable for an average 6' 200 pound male.
With so many planes having touch screens on the seat in front of you I wish they'd get rid of the service cart altogether, let people select what they want and then deliver it as convenient.
Spirit has a horrible 28" pitch. It seems like the most common seat pitch for regular coach is 31" or 32", though it varies by aircraft type and carrier.
> prohibits passengers from using mobile phones to make voice calls during flight;
Interesting... on 9/11 the voice calls from passengers to their loved ones are part of the history. Not like a law is going to stop you... but this feels like an odd thing to make illegal. And what about VoIP?
Not a lot of comments about the tyranny of regulations in this thread. Surprised there isn't more push-back against a law that is almost entirely regulations imposed on businesses and travelers.
The bill has at least 18 regulations according to this article. I’ll be waiting to hear about the 36 we are eliminating. Surely the libertarians and small-government conservatives will demand it.
Airlines, unfortunately, seem to be one of those industries that if you didn't make them do something with regulations, they would never do it. Like the shrinking seats, beating people, dragging them off planes, etc.
A 2 for 1, this response contains a logical fallacy and a shifting of goalposts.
First, I was told all regulations are bad, this nuance is only coming up now In response to hypocrisy being pointed out.
Second, which industries have historically implemented regulations without a legal requirement? The banking, insurance, tech, healthcare and energy industries all seem to fight regulation pretty hard.
> prohibits airlines from "bumping" passengers who've already boarded a plane;
It's interesting the article says no one noticed these regulations but this one seems like a big deal since there was so much press about those passengers removed off of planes not too long ago.
> mandates that airlines allow passengers to check strollers if they are traveling with small children
This one is a little odd to me, especially since the law [0] doesn't mention a limit to the age of the child. I can see where a stroller is considered necessary for the mobility of the child, just as a wheelchair or walking frame might be considered necessary for an adult but every time I visit America, I see parents pushing around children that are far too old for a stroller. It seems really odd to encourage this.
There should really be an age limit. I understand that American politics would never accept a reasonable limit like 4 years old but everyone should be able to accept that a 10-year-old doesn't need a stroller.
It's probably to force people to check them and free up overhead space for bags. With baggage fees there's less and less space up there as everyone tries to cram everything into their carryon.
I don't like Trump at all, but this kind of "outrage for the sake or outrage" article really makes the media look bad.
The worst part of this bill, IMO, is that it includes hurricane relief funds in a bill otherwise targeting minor airline regulations.
But otherwise, as far as I'm concerned somebody who'd stuff a dog in an overhead bin and smoke e-cigarettes and talk on the phone all flight deserves to be thrown off the plane.
Honestly, I really don't see why it would get much coverage. Contrary to the article's hyperbole, it doesn't "radically change" anything, and I think most reasonable people would be in favor of the new rules.
Yea it really did. They could have just left the entire Trump part out really. It's just a bill, that was passed and signed into law. Nothing unusual. It seems to help people and it's weird the Trump administration didn't try to do more marketing around it to make him look better.
Law is a bit like programming. Imagine reviewing commits to a vast codebase on a tight deadline.
This feature seems to belong in a different package. It should be factored out. But the code builds, and rejecting the whole pull request would delay shipment.
Probably one of those things that's slipped in last minute rather than creating an entire separate bill for it. The same people would probably vote yes on it anyway.
What's wrong with banning voice calls? It would be incredibly annoying to have to sit next to someone yelling into a phone on a 4+ hour voip call during a flight.
>The story of this law has been dominated largely by what isn't in it: no restrictions on what airlines can charge for baggage or change fees.
I'm glad. I don't like paying baggage fees (in fact, I've started to travel much more with only a carry-on partly to avoid the fees) but this is one of those things that the market should decide. It's an extra revenue stream for airlines (or an extra perk when waived for those with status). In general gives airlines more options and more flexibility in adjusting ticket prices.