Additional charges imposed by many airlines often take their customers by surprise.
Budget airlines in particular may charge extra fees for services such as check-in or luggage transportation.
The Association of Finnish Travel Agents (AFTA) says airlines are often lax when it comes to providing advance information about such charges.
The Association says that budget airlines have revolutionized the airline industry in many ways. One of the new practices includes tickets priced on different fare bases, as well as additional charges.
One operator that stands out in terms of innovative pricing is the Irish airline Ryanair, which last year investigated the possibility of billing passengers for use of its toilet facilities. In its most extreme plans, Ryanair has proposed the sale of separate standing places at the back of its aircraft. However, these proposals were thrown out because of safety concerns.
”Neither washroom charges nor standing places were accepted, nor do I know how these proposals were planned. Ryanair has only succeeded in attracting marketing attention with these ideas,” said AFTA CEO Heli Mäki-Fränti.
Additional Charges Ratchet up Ticket Prices
In spite of the Ryanair experiences with inventive charges, many additional charges are still billed to passengers. Ryanair charges passengers to transport their luggage: charges may run 15 euros for the first piece of luggage and 35 euros for the second piece on each leg of a flight. If the flight involves one stopover, carrying a single piece of luggage would cost a passenger 60 euro. The baggage charge increases if it is paid at the airport rather than when the passenger reserves his or her flight.
Printing a Ryanair check-in ticket can also be an expensive affair. If the passenger arrives for the flight without a printed check-in voucher, the company charges 40 euros for printing it at the airport.
Air Baltic also applies charges for carrying luggage. The company charges passengers 15 euros per flight leg for each piece of baggage. Air Baltic’s charges are also slightly lower if they are paid online before check-in. The airline plans to introduce a check-in charge of around five euros, which is already being applied at some airports.
Drive to Harmonise Fees
AFTA says that airlines’ extra charges often vary and passengers are often informed at the last minute when new fees are introduced. Consumers often contact the Consumer Agency because of such surprise charges.
”The problem is these fees often don’t show up in the reservation systems of travel agencies, which means passengers only find out about them when they show up at the airport, and then they can be higher than if they were paid before the flight,” AFTA’s Mäki-Fränti explained.
The highest number of complaints lodged with Finland’s Consumer Agency involve online reservations. AFTA officials say that the EU has also woken up to the tangle of extra fees faced by airline passengers. Efforts are currently on at the EU level to harmonize the system of airline fees and to make the process more transparent.
YLE
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