Airlines Charging Themselves to Death

I've been amused by the recent Southwest Airlines ad campaign that revolves around letting your bags travel, since it's free on Southwest.

In order to advertise low fares, most airlines pile on additional fees for things like checking bags, advanced seat selection, breathing clean air, and talking to a human being instead of using their web-based, Linux-hating interfaces.

Such surcharges are like a layer of anguish icing spread between the layers of misery that make up air travel . Flying commercial is already such a horrendous way to get from where you are to where you want to be that I avoid it whenever possible. So it makes my day to read in BoingBoing that the airlines losing more money are the ones charging the most fees, while conversely, low-fee airlines are performing a tad better.

I know that capitalism and the free market have gotten a bad rap of late, but sometimes, just when I'm ready to give up hope, something like this pops up to remind me that companies hoist themselves on their own petard when they try to squeeze every last drop of revenue out of their customer base.

Let's see if I'm allowed on my flight to Atlanta on Saturday.

Image via Wikimedia Commons