Let Them Eat Air!

Apr 18, 2010 by winjaw

Lot of baggage in the news lately.

Little Florida-based Spirit Airlines is a bad, bad boy, at least in the eyes of the federal Transportation Department and a couple of U.S. Senators with no other pressing issues.

In a nutshell, the airline is going to start charging passengers to use the overhead bins for those pesky steamer trunks they don’t want to check.

The nerve.  

At first blush, this is probably the dumbest idea yet from an industry that basically is the pits in customer service.

To get a decent fare, you have to plan your trip a year in advance, and be willing to travel through six different cities over nine hours to get to your destination that’s two hours away direct.

And you’re in a steel can, with smelly, loud, rude (fill in your descriptive term) people who either want to share their life story or don’t want to share the so-called armrest.

And your seat is wet from the last passenger who spilled something; and the stewardess is going to hit your shins with the beverage cart; and you will not leave on time; and you will not arrive on time.

That’s if you even make it to your plane after going through security, where all the white-haired, blue bonnet wearing old ladies are the only ones who get pulled out for “additional security” checks.

The only people who like to fly own their planes. For the rest of us, we hate it, the airport, the travel, the security lines, the everything.

So what the heck is Spirit thinking? And aren’t we glad we have the government and some senators to tell this uppity airline what it can and can’t do.  Especially since the airlines are still regulated by the government.

Oh wait. They aren’t.

So we have the feds planning big hearings to tell a private business it can’t charge customers for overhead space. A quick side note, the airline also has reduced its fares by the same amount. You don’t have a carry on, you actually will pay less.
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My concern is what about all the indignation over those incredibly comfortable down blankets and the massive pillows with that incredibly soft down from some extinct bird that the airlines are now charging for.

Or the checked bags. Or the earphones.  Or daring to ask for an entire can of Coke or another restaurant-sized bag of peanuts. That’s a TSA warning and you face the potential of getting on the dreaded “no-fly” list. (Is that such a bad thing?)

There is an excellent column along the same lines from The Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby, who is obviously brilliant because he agrees with me. One thing he points out are all the government fees attached to your ticket price – something the feds sure aren’t complaining about.

Now the Big Five airlines have all come out saying they won’t charge for overhead bin rentals. And aren’t they momma’s good little boy. Of course, they charge for everything else.

And in reality, there is nothing free. It’s included in the price of your ticket. What Spirit is trying to do, is focus on a more “menu” type deal where you pay for the services you want.

I can’t believe I just used the word “service” in a blog about the airline industry and didn’t include the “bad,” “horrendous,” or “are you joking.”

We still have a somewhat free enterprise market system. In the end, the customer determines which business succeeds with their pocketbook.

But until we all have our very own “beam me up Scotty” travel devices in every household, we are stuck.

My concern is the federal government seriously thinking about trying to stop a private industry from charging customers for a specific thing – and being very upfront about it. There’s no “hidden fee.”

They can charge for our pillows, our blankets, our carrot stick and peanuts. They can charge for the privilege of going to an airport, for checking our bags. But they will never take our sacred overhead bins.

Or our air. That’s ours. We brought it on and it doesn’t take up any space. They can never charge us for air.

Can they?