Pretty soon there will be a fee to use the oxygen masks in emergency landings!

"If you aren't quick enough off the mark, you could find yourself sitting on the other side of the plane from your family or partner. It's no way to start a holiday."

I guess that depends on your family or partner.

I wonder if there are any provisions for parents traveling with young children? Maybe it will be a benefit. I'll let Joe from accounting look after my screaming kid for the next 6 hours on the plane.

Air Tran has been pulling the same lousy stunt for a while now ($6 for advance seat selection). I always skip it and wait until I check in online sometime within the 24 pre-departure range, and have always been able to get my preference (window seat, somewhere near the front, on whichever side the sun is not glaring into the cabin).

Airlines are scum. I would rather pay more for a fare than pay a lower price and get nickled and dimed to death. It makes me feel like I'm getting ripped off.

Southwest gets 90% of my business now, but 5 years ago I only flew American.

@bizzz: You joke, but every time I fly internationally I do what I can to avoid sitting next to parts of families scattered around the plane. Not because the kids are annoying (other than seat kicking, they're usually ok) but because the parents come and check on them every 10 seconds. Do you want juice? Do you want a toy? Don't watch that movie. Let me change it for you. Do you have to go the bathroom? You're not drinking enough.

I exaggerate, but it's one of my little peeves. It's hard to do seat selection to avoid that, but if a family ever wants to trade seats with me so they can all sit together, I say yes.

@tailstoo:
I agree with you on the airline sentiment, but I'm not a fan of Southwest since they lost my luggage on one particularly hellacious trip a couple of years ago.

I'm holding out for high-speed rail. I swear, I'd never fly again (at least not intranationally).

British Airways is on my personal boycott list after 2 flights several months apart that had delays due to mechanical problems (which is excusable) but extremely incompetant ground staff who couldn't provide any information or even the most basic customer service. They also refused to listen to any customer feedback that wasn't delivered through the website (even their Heathrow HQ had no way to accept comments or complaints).

Both flights had a 15-hour delay and the only reason I didn't miss the rescheduled flight was because of the kindness of some random hotel employees. Long story short, BA made me more frustrated than any airline ever has. They're at the top of my list.

@bizzz: I don't know about BA, but the one time I flew Southwest with my family, the plane arrived with a nearly full cabin, and by the time we got to our boarding group there were not two seats together anywhere. We had asked the gate agent to try to bump us up so that we could get adjoining seats to take care of our 1 year old, but she was not interested. (My wife and I were willing to sit separately, as long as one of us ended up next to our son.)

So, we get on the plane, find our three nearest-but-not adjacent seats, and I flag down the flight attendant and start giving her care & feeding instructions for our toddler. Who's already starting to kvetch because we're two rows away from him.

Needless to say, adjacent seating was quickly acquired for us by the FA.

In any case, the point is, if airlines take this position then it's really up to them to deal with the fallout, in my opinion.

@tailstoo: I am with you tailstoo, I do not understand why some airline does not raise it ticket price and do away with fees. I bet they would sell twice as many tickets charging a higher amount with no fees.

At least you can take solace in the fact that if you do get screwed by this; as long as you're polite, BA flight attendants will serve you more than enough drinks to get you totally plastered on an overseas flight. (Just don't be an obnoxious drunk)

<3 BA

@bizzz: One of my co-workers at my last job had to fly down to her parents' with her four-year-old son. She very carefully reserved two seats next to each other and specified every time she called them that the other member of her party was a four-year-old boy.

So naturally they get to check-in and boarding and the seats have been reassigned so that mom & kid are about 6 rows away from each other, on opposite sides of the plane. It took over an hour for them to get that sorted out. I mean, really? There should be some kind of flag in the software that forces certain pairs not to be split up.

@tailstoo: So you prefer an airline that doesn't let you book seats in advance to one that gives you the option of doing so for a fee?

Spirit has been doing this already. I had booked a flight earlier this year and nowhere did I notice it saying that I would be charged for seat selection until my credit card payment went thru and tickets were purchased. When I finally got to the seat selection page, I had almost relunctantly paid for a seat selection because I thought there was no way to avoid this until I notice the fine print that I can select for free during day of boarding at the terminal. Needless to say, I will never fly Spirit again.

@bizzz: It could have it's good points. A friend of mine went somewhere with his (then) girlfriend on United two years ago. They were on separate ends of the coach cabin. She was apparently sitting between two old ladies, and he was sitting next to a cute brunette girl who is now his wife.

@Etoiles: Would you be surprised to learn that many (if not most) airlines are still using MS-DOS based software and 8088-based hardware in their reservation system?

@apd09: If any airline removed their crazy fees and raised their ticket price, you can bet that they would raise the ticket price to a price that will match the original amount of the ticket plus the total amount of the fees that they eliminated. So either way you'd be screwed.

BA is not the only airline to do this. Iceland Express also charges a seat booking fee. They don't reveal this fact until you are most of the way through ticket purchase, thinking the ticket = a seat on the plane. No, you have only purchased the opportunity to get on the plane, not a place to sit. And it didn't seem that the charge was to get a better seat than you might otherwise be assigned. Minimum seat charge was around £3-5 for the cheapest seat and prices went up from there for better seating. Up until that point I was willing to pay a slightly higher ticket price for a marginally better arrival time. Just not worth the hidden fees. Instead we flew Icelandair for less.

@bloggerX: Yes, a fee, and paid by credit cards only. It'll be a card-swiper on the mask. Using it will trigger an instant card cancellation due to your high-risk lifestyle and likely impending expiration. Universal default will cause all of your insurance to cancel because of the pre-existing condition.

Hey, nobody put a gun to your head and said ride the bird to the ground!

Of course, enterprising thieves will install their own skimmers and figure out how to rip off your account in the seconds between your attempted use of the oxygen mask and the impact. Your pre-purchased casket and funeral services will be forfeit and your loved ones sad paupers.

Brazil 2.0

"But consumer watchdog Which? warns..."

Must be a British watchdog group?

If it keeps me from getting a middle seat between two fat, drunken Brits returning from "holiday" in the Algarve, I'll pay it gladly...

@AngryK9: Id be ok with that. The problem is, they would lose money becasue most people who fly only do so once in a while and then they use a site like travelocity and sort by price. That price, which includes everything, will be the highest on that site since they dont include fees.

Id much rather all airlines show me how ,uch my plane ride is going to cost. But dont charge me 300, then 30 for my bags, 60 for a fuel surcharge, 12 for an online convienence fee, etc, just charge me 400 and be done with it. I know what im paying right there and then with little effort and im happy. you can even throw in a $5 im not going to screw with you fee.

British Air (and Alitalia) are two two non-US airlines that have treated me badly in the past, in both cases related to seat assignments.

I will go out of my way to avoid both of them.

Incidently, it is interesting to note that both are in financial difficulty. Perhaps treating passengers badly does have consequences.

@RevancheRM:

Which? is a bit like Consumer Reports, kinda.

Splitting families should be a no-no. It is bad enough to fly with kids, having to slit the kids away from their parents should be illegal.

Solution? let flyers book their seats at the time of the ticket purchase. Family of 4 then has a choice of how they will arrange themselves on the plane.

Do airlines have all these fees to make more profit or to make enough profit that its worthwhile to operate?

I'd love to see one simple government requirement...any advertised fare has to be an all-inclusive number including all fees and charges. It's misleading and bordering on fraud for an airline to advertise a fare and then add fees that almost equal the original fare. Doesn't the FAA have the authority to do this?

@bizzz: A similar scenario happened on a flight I was on. My nightmare experience involves a parent who's (teenage) daughter was in the row behind us. She was clearly able to fend for herself and appeared to appreciate the separation. However the father kept turning around about every other minute to check on her. The guy was already on my crap list because he turned off 'my' air nozzle after I nodded off at takeoff. In a rather brusk manner I asked if he would prefer that I switch seats with his daughter (who said no). The second option was to sit still (she's a big girl) and stop bumping me or I was going to hit him. The strange thing is I am pretty easy going and generally don't let small annoyances get to me on flights. I think he was shocked at being confronted because he sat still for the rest of the flight.

Someone pointed out at least one other airline does this. My two cents is that Spirit airlines also charges for the privilege of picking a seat. Northwest (or is that Delta now?) does it on certain flights as well. Since I am too cheap I just wait to check in and take what I get.

@maxx22: I've had bad experience with Alitalia, but British Airways saved the day on that one. I'll never fly Alitalia again, but I'd happily fly British Airways again.

@zjgz: Mostly to make enough of a profit to make it worth doing. People like to forget that the primary goal of a business is to make money, and secondary is providing a service (in most cases).

And once they get past that, people seem to think "well profit is profit...they are greedy if they want more" when the fact is, no smart businessman is going to invest money in a business that makes him 4% return when he can invest in one that will make him 14%. Business, when making their profit goals will rarely try to nickle and dime their customers. Once achieving their goals, most will try to grow and keep that profit percentage and that's where they make their money. Its very likely that right now, airlines are trying to turn a profit and recoup huge losses or prepare a "warchest" for the now here recession.

@H3ion: The problem is, fees are disclosed before the purchase. The price you pay is infact the cost to get you on a plane. The problem is, they then charge to get your bag on the plane or if you want food on the plane, entertainment on the plane, etc. All of which isnt going to be regulated (and shouldnt be)

We just need to learn from experience. I know which airlines allow me to use my earphones instead of buying theres, or which will give me a snack on the plane and not charge me 7 dollars for a cookie (im looking at you american).

"Passengers just swallowed these fees with barely a whimper, and they're not going away ... Why leave money on the table when people will pay you?"

[bloomberg.com]

/puke

I have the cheaper one 98% they work really good (I can post pictures if anyone likes?)

@maxx22: Well, Alitalia happens to be in far more dire straits than BA, but eah, they got what was coming to them. I once took a flight to Milan (were the airport planners high when they decided where to place Malpensa?) in business class with them and they threatened to downgrade me into economy because I had the nerve to use the call button.

Must be opposite day for me. Last couple of times I purchased tickets on an airline, all be it a Chinese airline, we were required to reserve our seats at the time the tickets were purchased. This was six weeks before the flight. Their online reservation system would not let us continue unless we preselected our sets.

For the flight the ticket was the cost of the ticket. No extra surprises. I was able to upgrade the tickets at the airport to business and first class (different flight segments) for a couple hundred dollars, much cheaper than getting the upgrade beforehand. All very easy.

Compared to other airlines I have been on, I think they better and were nicer than any American airline I have been on recently. I can't comment about BA as I've never flown them.

Others have mentioned acouple of others, but actually there are lots of other airlines that have been doing this (and worse) for years - Sterling.dk used to charge for choosing seats at any stage (at least BA let you choose 24 hours in advance for free), Cimber do the same, & EasyJet charge you for the privilege of being allocated seats at all (otherwise it's a scrum to be first on & get best seats).