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FREQUENT FLIER By
Tim Winship
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The latest reward for passenger loyalty: fees.
It's no secret that the airlines' strategy for surviving the current profit crunch depends almost entirely on what the airlines call service or convenience fees — what consumers are more likely to refer to as nuisance fees or nickel-and-diming. By whatever name, they're new and higher charges for services that traditionally have been offered on a no-cost basis.
And it's not just soft drinks, aisle seats and checked bags that now have travelers reaching for their wallets. Almost every aspect of frequent-flier programs has been newly re-imagined as a revenue-generator, with program members facing fees at every step in the process.
American Airlines in June began charging a minimum of $5 for any and all award tickets in AAdvantage, the world's largest mileage program. And earlier this month, US Airways imposed award ticket fees ranging between $25 and $50.
Delta and Northwest both have, or will have, such surcharges in place. Delta now charges $25 for domestic award tickets, $50 for international. And as of Sept. 15, Northwest will charge between $25 and $100, depending on the flight distance.
While these surcharges may theoretically be of limited duration, they negate for now the possibility of a truly free ticket just as categorically as do permanent ticketing fees.
(While fuel surcharges are the exception among U.S. carriers, they are common among foreign airlines, sometimes adding more than $400 to the cost of an award ticket.)
Where applicable, booking fees apply to reservations for both revenue and mileage-based reservations. For paid trips, booking online generally presents no great challenge to any consumer with basic computer skills, so it's a simple matter to avoid the fees by going the do-it-yourself route.
But for award reservations, where seats available for mileage redemption are limited, there is considerable pressure to take advantage of a reservations agent's expertise in navigating among the restrictions to create a viable itinerary.
In other words, the airlines have created a bottleneck, and then charge consumers who need assistance in bypassing the restrictions. Create a problem, then sell the solution to that problem — an ingeniously diabolical business model seemingly designed to generate as much ill will as profit.
As they do elsewhere, the discount carriers have bragging rights in this area, with Southwest and Spirit offering phone bookings for free, and AirTran and JetBlue charging just $10. Highest is US Airways, at $30 for domestic award bookings, and $40 for international. Most other carriers charge $25 for phone bookings.
Today, with almost all tickets being issued electronically and sent via e-mail, the rationale for assessing rush charges has disappeared. But the fees themselves not only persist, they have been rising.
American and United both charge between $50 and $100, depending on how close to the departure date the award tickets are requested. Continental and Delta split the difference, at $75. And AirTran, Alaska, Frontier, Hawaiian, Southwest, and Spirit have no rush fees at all.
That means that the popular round trip domestic upgrade from discounted coach will cost $100 plus 30,000 miles. And on most international routes, an upgrade will cost $700 and 50,000 miles.
It could cost you as much as $250 if it's an award ticket on US Airways. American, Continental and United all charge $150.
As a group, the discount carriers are much less likely to charge frequent-flier fees. And when they do, the fees tend to be lower. Among the legacy carriers, the worst of the worst is clearly US Airways, which stands out for both more and higher fees than its peers.
That doesn't mean that frequent fliers affiliated with more costly programs should shred their membership cards. While less costly, the discount airlines' loyalty schemes are much less robust, offering fewer options for earning and redeeming miles. Fees aren't the whole story.
But they can be useful as tie-breakers when choosing among programs that would otherwise meet a traveler's needs. Rather than trying to grasp the entire fee picture, consumers are best served by focusing on those fees that are most likely to affect them, given their individual travel patterns and reward goals.
For example, travelers who principally use miles for upgrades from discounted coach will find that American's new upgrade copayment scheme seriously erodes the value of that program. Alternatives might be the programs of Delta or United, which offer similarly extensive route networks, but don't charge upgrade copayments.
The cost to travelers goes beyond the purely financial. As fees have proliferated, simplicity and consistency have been sacrificed, adding extra confusion and frustration to the growing list of fliers' gripes.
So numerous and complicated have the fees become that the airlines themselves can't keep track of them — a fact which became strikingly apparent in the course of researching fees for this column. In one representative case, two airline employees provided conflicting information, which in turn was inconsistent with the rules posted on that carrier's own Web site.
There's a straightforward way to restore the programs' lost value, simplicity and consistency: Declare mileage programs fee-free zones. That, come to think of it, might also be a fitting reward for frequent fliers' loyalty.
This writer, together with the editors of www.SmarterTravel.com and www.Airfarewatchdog.com, has compiled a chart comparing 12 frequent-flier fees imposed by 14 U.S. airlines. The chart can be downloaded for free from the www.SmarterTravel.com Web site.
Reach Tim Winship at questions@frequentflier.com
