I recently went on a trip. We booked one of those “cheap” airlines, where you pay a la carte. Our round trip flight was about $50. In the process, I was amazed at the number of people who were frustrated by the rules, as if you don’t have ample opportunity to learn the rules in the process. So I wanted to go through a booking, to show you that there are plenty of warnings, and that it may or may not be cheapest to go this route.
I’m going to pretend to book a flight. From Cincinnati to Orlando, round trip, I found a flight for $87.96. The next page asks for my personal information. They then offer me a few options.
The price highlighted is for one way, and in smaller font, it indicates the round trip price. This could be a bit more straight forward, since my selection is for a round trip flight, so one way worth of baggage isn’t the expectation. I decide to ‘continue and customize.’ The next page is seat selection.
Every single seat has a price associated with it. Again, this could be more straight forward. Nowhere on the page does it clearly indicate that you don’t have to pick a seat. I click “continue.” There is a link below continue that says “what if I don’t pick,” but I didn’t check that. The next page causes me to pause and lets me know I should rethink my options.
I select no thanks. The next page provides my carry on and checked bag costs. I can select that I want to carry on and board first, just carry on, or have no carry on. I select no carry on and no checked bag. As I scroll down, it lets me know that I can have a personal item for free, and it lets me know the size restriction for this personal item. It tells me multiple times on this page that bags will be more expensive at the airport.
I click continue, without selecting any baggage, and it halts me again.
I then get asked a few questions about the check in process and any other add-ons. I decline everything, and I’m sent to the payment page. At the end of the page, I have to agree to several things, including baggage requirements, before booking.
The entire point here is that this airline has warned the consumer several times, through multiple pages and “clicks” that there are fees outside of the ticket price. So even if you didn’t know that the reason you found such cheap flights was because their pricing is a la carte, they’ve told you multiple times through the booking process. Similarly, you know going in, on any airline, that a bag over 40 or 50 lbs is going to be considered overweight.
It was frustrating to watch so many people get mad that they checked your bag size as you boarded the plane. You signed up for that. You could have checked the size. I read the wrong section when I packed my bag, so I had verified it as a carry-on size, which I didn’t pay for. I was able to move things around in my bag for it to be able to fit. If it didn’t fit, I knew that mistake was on me, and I’d pay the fee. The fee in the airport was $99. Yes, it seems astronomical to pay that fee for something that you can walk on with if you’re flying Delta or American, but it’s the rules for this airline, and I know that going in. I could have adjusted things for the flight home, so my total for this roundtrip would have been $150, still cheaper than roundtrips on other airlines.
For the pretend flight I went through above, if I had selected The Perks bundle, my total would have been $279. I’d get a carry on, checked bag, and the ability to select my seat at that price. Had I selected just a carryon each direction, my total would have been about $225. For the same dates, I could fly more inconvenient schedules (e.g., midnight arrival) for $209 through American.
When comparing the prices, you need to see what the best options are for what you need. If you can’t get by with just a personal item, then you need to factor that into the flight cost when comparing to other airlines. If you can’t handle the psyche of having your bag checked for size when you board the plane, then stick with the traditional airlines.
Be an informed traveler. Know the fees associated with your airline. Know the restrictions for each item. Plan in advance instead of having to move things around at the airport where you’re going to feel the stress.
One Dollar Allowance 