Airlines are maneuvering to make comparison shopping harder by allowing surcharges to be advertised seperately from the fare.

This would make it okay for an airline to promote a $10 fare from New York to Chicago in a direct mailer, only to have buried in fine print on its website a $700 “Daddy Needs a New Pair of Blue Suede Shoes” tax.

The gambit attempts to push online services like Expedia and Orbitz into the lockers by making it harder to piece together all the information, as well as give a wet willy to the average consumer weighing options.

Airline lobbyists forget that resistance is futile. Like Borg, online ticketing services will assimilate and adapt to any fare hijinx.

Trans-continental bullet trains, anyone?

A Move to Add Still More Fine Print to Advertised Airfares [New York Times]

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