Thanks for your patience while the missus and I took some time off. Like Richard Nixon in 1968, I’m tanned, rested, and ready, as promised. Some observations on the trip itself — which was to the Turks and Caicos, incidentally — later. I don’t normally give trip reports, per se, but this one will deserve some special comment.
While in the T&C, I was blissfully disconnected. No laptop, no e-mail, and only one unfortunate check of the cellphone’s voice mail. The occasional TV showing CNN was too much information.
But even in this low-information environment, I learned about American Airlines’ imposition of a $15 fee for the first piece of checked luggage, effective June 15, 2008. In the a-la-carte travel environment we’re increasingly living in, this is no surprise, alas.
But it’s still stupid, especially doing it piecemeal, with a new fee every month. It’s bad PR, it cheapens the AA brand (making them seem even more like the much maligned Spirit Airlines, which has been charging for all luggage domestically for a while now), and it has negative ramifications for anyone getting on an American Airlines plane.
Anyone? “But hold on, I never check luggage! This won’t affect me!” you exclaim. So you would think. But you’re wrong: Now EVERYONE will be trying to squeeze their junk into their carry-ons to avoid the fee. The one-carry-on business traveler is now competing with the fee-avoiding vacationer. The battle for the bins is about to get much, much worse.
(FYI: While Alaska and Delta have said they don’t plan to follow suit, we’ll see how long that promise lasts. Read Chris Elliott’s post to see why others — such as Continental and United, who are considering it — are likely to add the fee soon.)
But wait, there’s more devaluation of the travel experience! It’s minor, but perhaps a suitable coda to our vacation, which had us flying on US Airways, not the aforementioned American. US Airways, never content to be left out of a story of PR or declining customer service, has eliminated the free 12-gram packages of pretzels from its domestic flights, effective June 1.
Isn’t air travel glamorous?
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…And a housekeeping note:
It turns out I wasn’t the only one to take a vacation, recently. My e-mail inbox took a vacation without letting me know it, and also came back from holiday this weekend. That is to say that my “unread” folder has ballooned to several thousand messages, with some messages going back several weeks. Not sure why they weren’t delivered until now, but I’ll be slogging through in coming days. I was wondering why there weren’t any outraged messages re: the luggage fees when I checked mail on Saturday, but now I know. (The messages are all there now.) If you were expecting a reply to something and didn’t get one, this may be why.