Airline Fees

Nothing new. All airlines are moving to a la carte pricing. If you want it, you pay for it. If you don't need it, you don't pay. It is going to get worse. Wait till they decide to charge for seat selection. The middle seat will be cheaper.

Some airlines are already charging for seat selection.

I can see this happening on air flight time less than 3 hrs. I can't see it happening to that large extent on the transatlantic or transpacific flights which are over 5.5 hrs. I can see them charging for certain seats. Remember yrs past when the airlines assigned you a seat. There will be a limit to the penny pinching w/out aggravating us "cattle." Can't have a rebellion over the Atlantic.

Thanks for posting the article, Frank. Food for thought.

BTW, Ryanair claims they may begin transatlantic flights once "open skies" starts later this month. Of course, they hinted at that before their recent financial problems.

I really doubt that Ryanair will go transcontinental. Mainly for three reasons:

1. They've tried already, the previous iteration of Ryanair flew to the US and it didn't work.
2. The whole low fare airline business is based on shorter trips. If you have an eight hour flight, you can only really use that plane for one round trip a day, whereas if you have a four hour flight you can probably put it on five legs over the course of the day.
3. The longer the distance, the more people are willing to pay more for frills like movies, meals, etc. Ryanair would have to dramatically change their philosophy to do so.