By Bill Shein
November 11, 2009

Travel by air recently? Did you pay extra for checked baggage? Cough up a few bucks to pick your own seat? Notice that when you emptied your pockets at security, none of your loose change was returned to you?

Welcome, my friends, to the new age of airline fees.

Slowly but surely, the nation’s airlines have added a variety of surcharges to the cost of a plane ticket. Why? Because like all corporations, they’re worried about you! A wallet or handbag filled with too much cash can make you list to one side while walking, possibly injuring your spine. The new fees relieve you of dangerous, possibly heavy stores of personal savings, protecting your back while reducing the nation’s overall health care costs.

(The preceding paragraph sponsored by America’s public relations industry. Slogan? “Utter Nonsense. Straight Face. ‘Nuff Said.”)

The Great Airline Fee Frenzy of the 21st Century began with a small “9/11 security fee,” a possibly worthy “airport improvement surcharge,” modest “fuel cost recovery fees,” and the questionable but largely benign, “Bet You Won’t Notice if We Quietly Add $7.00 to Your Ticket Price for Absolutely No Reason.”

But then the floodgates opened. If, while jammed into your economy class seat, your neck craves a smelly square of polyester foam that is, hilariously, called a “pillow,” it’s now $7.00. Want a scratchy, paper-thin “blanket” that only covers part of your body? Cough up another few bucks, pal. Craving something to drink? Pay $5.00 for a small mouthful of vaguely orange-flavored “juice,” or remain parched for hours in the plane’s recycled, humidity-free air.

Need to modify your travel plans? Expect to pay a “change fee” of well over $1 million. Like to pick your own seat? On some flights, that can be $75.00. Which would be fine if it guaranteed you won’t be seated next to Talky McBlatherstein on a long international flight. But it doesn’t.

Where will it end? Might we soon pay extra for the privilege of a flight crew that has slept at least eight hours during the past four days? Pay a “peace and quiet surcharge” or risk that flight attendants will wake any sleeping baby and poke it until it cries? Be forced to pay more for a seat cushion that can serve as a flotation device? Or discover, at the worst possible moment, that your no-frills seat cushion is filled with rocks?

No doubt the airlines learned this profitable strategy from the phone companies, who long ago mastered the art of adding small fees to your bill, nibbling away at your net worth until you are forced to work in a corporate-run labor camp to pay down your telecommunications debt. (Full disclosure: I spend one weekend a month at Verizon’s New England Customer Detention Center, working off years of accumulated “subscriber line charges” and inexplicable “inside wire maintenance” fees.)

What’s a passenger to do? In these difficult economic times, be resourceful. Rather than pay $50.00 or more per checked bag, some travelers just show up at the airport wearing a week’s worth of clothes, at once, in layers. Of course, by “some travelers,” I mean, “Me.” But perhaps it will catch on. Especially during the cold winter months.

It’d be nice if the airlines offered ways to balance out the new fees. Want $10.00 off your next Northwest Airlines flight? Just agree to pound on the cockpit door 30 minutes before arrival to wake the pilots. Or, depending on which fantastical story you believe, snap them out of a laptop-induced haze, a ferocious argument, or a loving embrace.

Maybe some planes could be piloted by 14-year-olds whose only experience is playing hours of Microsoft Flight Simulator. The savings could be passed on to you – and your heirs!

In their quest for easy profits, don’t be surprised when the airlines turn to outright extortion: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re beginning our descent into the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. That’s why flight attendants are coming through the cabin to collect the new, ‘Or We Can Just Turn Around and Go Back’ fee. Please have your credit card ready.”

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“Bill Shein” is the pen name of Talky McBlatherstein.