BAGS FEE?

.
My personal opinion has always been to allow only 1 free checked bag,
not 2 (size and weight restrictions apply) and keep the carry-on
policy as it is.
 
.
My personal opinion has always been to allow only 1 free checked bag,
not 2 (size and weight restrictions apply) and keep the carry-on
policy as it is.
Sharon, I completely agree. SWA will have to be very different from the others that are charging. I too think SWA should still allow 1 free-be checked bag, then charge cheaper for the overages of bags and weight. I had a funny feeling it was going to come to this. I think SWA is seeing the lost of revenue on the AT side if they were to stop charging after 2014 completion of taking in AT. Which is why we will not see any bag fees until 2015. But it will also help us hit our 15% or greater return on investments, I believe we are currently at 10-12%. Looking forward to a very, very strong next few years as everything comes together by 2016, can't wait...
 
it's really all about customer expectations.

There has to be some research to show how many customers make the difference in bag prices as one of the top 3 drivers.

WN is becoming more and more like the big 3 (or 4 depending on how you assume AA/US will turn out) in other respects so where are those customers going to go?

The real question is how many more bags WN checks than its competitors and the ratio of carryons to checked bags. I bet you have some insight, Sharon. WN can't afford to add more and more time to its turns to accommodate passengers stuffing bags in overhead bins. But as their stage length increases, it will become harder and harder to argue that a few extra minutes in boarding or customer reputation should stop picking up hundreds of millions of dollars in checked bag fees.

Also, as WN moves into many int'l markets, WN's bag makeup will change anyway.
 
Don't forget that WN is moving to a new res platform for international, presumably sometime in the next 90-120 days.  That's going to give them the capability to do what many other airlines already do, which is to create bundled fares that may or may not include checked bags, or has higher/lower allowances based on the fare basis selected.
 
If they tried that today, I suspect the check-in system would be choking over who gets bags and who doesn't.  
 
Having a variable bag allowance is hardly new, and the new system should be quite capable of determining the bag allowances by any combination of fare basis and passenger attributes (e.g. A-List gets a higher allowance).  TAM already does this with their fare families and Amadeus DCS, as do Finnair and I believe either Air Berlin and Norwegian (if not both).
 
I'm also pretty certain that the system can handle pre-payment at the time of purchase
 
How you're being nickel and dimed by airlines:


"These fees have become, for many airlines, the difference between a profit and a loss, and that is not lost on airline executives all over the world," said Sorensen. "That is why I think we are going to see more and more activity in this direction."

Here is the breakdown of ancillary revenue using data from IdeaWorks and carTrawler for the last three years and this year's forecast:

2010: $22.6 billion
2011: $32.5 billion
2012: $36.1 billion
2013 (est): $42.6 billion

Airlines receive 60 percent of ancillary revenue from frequent-flier programs, 25 percent from baggage fees, 10 percent from onboard/seating services fees and 5 percent of fees from travel services, according to the study."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101149963